Are We Doomed?

It’s a particularly watery moment, with a hurricane on the Gulf Coast and El Niño-fueled waves flooding California homes. Not helping: The seas are rising, and they’re going to keep rising. How much can we build to stop that? And if we can’t, what will happen to the places in the way of the waves?Ben Bradford starts in New Orleans, where a flashpoint new study finds rising water will (eventually) overwhelm our best sea walls. But what about those of the Dutch, who have spent a thousand years living dry at submarine elevations?Then, there are nations already retreating from the rising water’s path. From Lagos to Fiji, we look at the best attempts we can learn from — and the worst.Jesse Keenan, professor of urban planning at Tulane University and author of North: The Future of Post-Climate AmericaJola Ajibade, environmental sciences professor at Emory UniversitySupport 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

Why are babies born young? How come a squirrel lives longer than a rat, but not as long as a naked mole rat (or Ben’s cousin’s tortoise)? Scientific breakthroughs over the past few decades suggest the ultimate doom awaiting us all — aging, and eventually death — isn’t simply an inevitable slide. Aging is a process inside the body, with mechanisms researchers are beginning to understand … and interfere with.Now billions of dollars are pouring into secretive longevity labs, and the first attempts to rejuvenate aging cells inside human beings are underway.So: are we getting closer to a real Fountain of Youth? And if we are, who gets to drink?Guest:Susan Dominus, staff writer for The New York Times MagazineSupport 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

“Uh oh,” said several Manhattan Project scientists after they helped build a bomb and then it got used. They jumped to stop it from ever being used again. Solution: a newsletter. Through a somewhat convoluted chain of events that spawned the most famous symbol of humanity’s dance with extinction: the Doomsday Clock.Alex Bell, the CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the Clock, tells its strange origin story and describes why the hands now sit closer than ever toward midnight — as well as what “midnight” actually means. Guest: Alexandra Bell, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic ScientistsSupport Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpodListen to related episodes:More Nukes!How to Start a Nuclear WarWe Design the AI To Kill Us AllDid AI Just Escape?Is the World Ending ... Or Are We Just Online? 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

Imagine a friendly assistant that can help you build a bioweapon. Or a chatbot in the nuclear weapons chain, cheerfully hallucinating an attack. AI national security expert Hamza Chaudhry worries this is the biggest threat right now — not “killer robot,” but humans being humans. Because whether AI becomes dangerously smart or confidently dumb, people will find face-palming ways to abuse it. From deranged cultists and rogue states, to stockbrokers and the most evil version of Ben’s little cousin, handing everyone a powerful technology with few guardrails could end badly. Or, is there a path to convince companies to add their own?Guest: Hamza Chaudhry, AI national security expert, Future of Life InstituteThis episode was edited by Annie Russell.Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpodListen to our episode about rogue AI: We Design the AI That Kills Us AllAnd our episode about nuclear oopsies: How to Start a Nuclear War 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

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

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

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

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