Are We Doomed?
by NPR Network
Is this your podcast?NPR Network is a well-respected media organization known for its commitment to quality journalism and storytelling across various platforms. They produce thought-provoking content that often addresses complex societal issues, making them a …
Insights from recent episode analysis
Audience Interest
- existential risks to society
- climate change impacts
Podcast Focus
- investigates societal risks
- explores existential questions
Publishing Consistency
- one episode released
- active for one year
Platform Reach
- no platforms detected
- unknown follower count
Insights are generated by CastFox AI using publicly available data, episode content, and proprietary models.
Total monthly reach
Estimated from 20 chart positions in 20 markets.
By chart position
- 🇺🇸US · Science#17300K to 1M
- 🇦🇺AU · Science#26100K to 300K
- 🇨🇦CA · Science#32100K to 300K
- 🇬🇧GB · Science#1015K to 30K
- 🇳🇱NL · Science#2930K to 100K
- Per-Episode Audience
Est. listeners per new episode within ~30 days
290K to 950K🎙 Weekly cadence·1 episodes·Last published 4d ago - Monthly Reach
Unique listeners across all episodes (30 days)
580K to 1.9M🇺🇸53%🇦🇺16%🇨🇦16%+17 more - Active Followers
Loyal subscribers who consistently listen
232K to 760K160 real followers tracked across platforms
Market Insights
Platform Distribution
Reach across major podcast platforms, updated hourly
Total Followers
—
Total Plays
—
Total Reviews
—
* Data sourced directly from platform APIs and aggregated hourly across all major podcast directories.
On the show
Recent episodes
Is the World Ending or Are We Just Online?
Jun 16, 2026
Unknown duration
Are We Going the Way of the Roman Empire?
Jun 9, 2026
Unknown duration
We Try and Kill the Internet
Jun 2, 2026
Unknown duration
Past Dooms That Didn't Arrive
May 26, 2026
Unknown duration
How To Survive a Nuclear War
May 19, 2026
Unknown duration
Social Links & Contact
Official channels & resources
Official Website
Login
RSS Feed
Login
| Date | Episode | Description | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/16/26 | Is the World Ending or Are We Just Online? | Are we living through the end times or the best moment in human history? Novelist and internet veteran Jason Pargin argues you have spent your life inside a “literal reverse apocalypse” — and if you don’t see it, he knows who to blame. Ben Bradford talks with Pargin about doom-scrolling, child mortality, processed donuts, murderous Toyota drivers, and how humanity’s greatest problems may be side effects of its greatest successes. So how do we tell if the world is really ending — or if the internet has trapped us inside a giant doom machine?Guest:Jason Pargin, author of I’m Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom, TikTok: @jasonkparginSupport Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpodEarlier episodes mentioned: Are We Going the Way of the Roman Empire?Past Dooms That Didn't Arrive To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 6/9/26 | Are We Going the Way of the Roman Empire? | Historically, societies fall. Civilizations collapse. But is that what’s happening now in the United States? With the help of historians, a former CIA-funded researcher on political instability, and one grumbling dad, Ben Bradford looks at the warning signs that can precede collapse — from polarization and political division to outside shocks and cascading crises. How much of that is visible in America right now? What would collapse actually look like in modern life? And if the alarms are blinking, is there still time to turn back?Guests:Ian Morris, historian, archaeologist, Stanford University professor, author: Why the West Rules—For Now.Monty Marshall, former senior consultant for the U.S. Political Instability Task Force.Annalee Newitz, science journalist, author: Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.Ben's Dad.Ben's Mom.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpodCheck out Ben’s previous series, Landslide. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 6/2/26 | We Try and Kill the Internet | The internet is how you get your news, your paycheck, your groceries, your banking, and sometimes your drinking water. Humanity has quietly handed over the keys to civilization to a network most of us don't understand and couldn't rebuild. So what happens if it goes down — and not for a day or two? Ben Bradford tries to kill the internet, hunting for weak points in undersea cables, cyberattacks, cloud computing, overlooked open-source plumbing, and fragile politics. It’s harder than it looks, but maybe not impossible. Should we be worried?Guests:Bruce Schneier, cryptographer, cybersecurity lecturer, and author of Click Here to Kill Everybody.Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 5/26/26 | Past Dooms That Didn't Arrive | People have been predicting the end of the world forever. They’ve always been wrong. Maybe we’re wrong today, too. So, we’re looking back at three past dooms predicted in the 20th century, none of which arrived as advertised. Why not? What can we learn? Does it mean that the current biggest end-of-the-world fears may be overblown, misunderstood, or — with effort — preventable? Along the way: failed utopias, dystopias, and the animal Ben fears most: the mini-hippo.Guest: Matt Novak, journalist at Gizmodo and long-time author of the Paleofuture blog.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 5/19/26 | How To Survive a Nuclear War | The air raid sirens scream (actually, they don’t work anymore). An emergency alert goes out, because … nuclear missiles are in-bound. It’s happening! How do we survive (non-Hollywood edition)? From diving into crumbling fallout shelters to emerging into a world where nuclear winter is descending, Ben explores what armageddon would actually look like, what the movies get wrong, and why — for most of us — it’s not a flash of light, but a cramped slog. Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Listen to our episode "How to Start a Nuclear War."Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 5/12/26 | How Do You Kill a Mosquito? | Mosquitoes are little jerks. They suck your blood to make more mosquitoes, spread deadly diseases like malaria and dengue, and have killed more humans than any other creature in the history of Earth. But now, we can fight back. Gene-editing technology (CRISPR, gene drives) could temporarily wipe out disease-carrying mosquitoes in whole regions — potentially saving millions of lives. A miracle, but with an unsettling question of its own: Who gets to decide when humanity rewrites nature?Also: radiation-blasted flies, Australian rabbit smoothies, and … Mosquito Jurassic Park.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 5/5/26 | Supervolcano! | A supervolcano burbles under Yellowstone National Park. Enormous. Real. According to the internet’s most excitable corners, just itching to turn America into charcoal any minute now. Ben Bradford investigates what supervolcanoes can actually do, why Yellowstone is almost certainly not about to blow its top, and how scientists tell when a volcano is really waking up. Panic over a national park may be distracting us from another, sneakier, more critical volcanic threat.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 4/28/26 | Let’s Design the AI That Kills Us All | Maddeningly, even some researchers building artificial intelligence see it as a potential existential threat on par with nuclear war. Ben Bradford follows three simple steps that could lead an AI to turn on humanity and attempt to wipe us out. From autonomous agents with misaligned goals to hacked infrastructure, bioweapons, and a real story of AI blackmail, a nerdy apocalypse thought experiment starts to feel a little too plausible. So, then we try to dismantle our rogue creation.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 4/28/26 | How To Start a Nuclear War | Humanity has repeatedly brought itself to the brink of nuclear war. Which raises a question: if everyone who can launch a nuke knows that could end the world, why does nuclear war still feel plausible? Ben explores how it could really happen, what close calls of the past tell us, and the bizarre logic of deterrence. And he lands, again and again, on one word: oopsie.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — | |
| 4/21/26 | Introducing Are We Doomed? | Grin at the apocalypse and find out with this curious, irreverent weekly podcast exploring the biggest dangers to our society and our species. From nuclear war and societal collapse to rogue AI and the moon drifting off … which “dooms” are real? What can we do? What does history tell us? And do you need to learn wilderness survival? Each week, acclaimed journalist Ben Bradford investigates the threats that haunt humanity with curiosity and only a little panic behind his eyes. The result: Gripping true stories, thoughtful guests, darkly funny insights, and an unexpected amount of hope. We’ve survived every "end of the world" so far, and let’s figure out why. So we can do it again. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy | — |
Showing 10 of 10
Sponsor Intelligence
Sign in to see which brands sponsor this podcast, their ad offers, and promo codes.
Similar Audience Demographics
Podcasts that attract a similar listener profile
Chart Positions
20 placements across 20 markets.
Chart Positions
20 placements across 20 markets.