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Is the world ending, or does it just feel like it? "Are We Doomed?" investigates the greatest risks facing society, the planet, and our species. What’s real? What’s hype? And how do we actually make it out alive? Nukes. Asteroids. Autocracy. Rogue AI. Climate-driven pandemics. Angry hippopotamuses. Teeth clenched, curiosity engaged, quips ready, this “slightly narrative” podcast explores everything from the existential and the unexpected to the overblown. Award-winning public radio journalist Ben Bradford brings you wild true stories, high-production sound design, and world-class experts answering the questions they never prepared for (“Why is the Earth doing this to us?”). This show delves into history, science, technology, and the natural world, to help you separate legitimate world-changing risks from doomsday fantasies. Come for the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park (real), stay to learn why the post-apocalyptic wasteland won’t look like the movies (sorry, you won’t be wandering with a shotgun and a dog), and leave with a better understanding of how our brilliant, bumbling species can chart a path through our current, terrifying adolescence.
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- 2 days ago32 min
Is the Microplastic In You Really Bad?
You have plastic in you. In your lungs, your gut, your blood, maybe your brain. That sounds bad.But how bad?Ben Bradford investigates whether microplastics are shaping up to be one of those hazards humanity realizes too late — like lead, asbestos, or air pollution — or whether we’re filling gaps in the science with fear.Guests:Tracey Woodruff, environmental health scientist and epidemiologistIan Mudway, toxicologist at Imperial College LondonSupport Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch animated 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
- 2 weeks ago32 min
How High Can You Build a Seawall?
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
- 3 weeks ago31 min
Can Other Planets Tell Us Our Fate?
The universe should be crawling with life. With hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and hundreds of billions of galaxies, at least someone must have gotten a few billion years’ head start on us. So where is everybody?This is the Fermi Paradox. And the simplest solution may be that intelligent life is common, but civilizations always destroy themselves before they get very far. And so will we.But that’s not the only answer…With the help of some ants, and a planet named Steve, Ben Bradford takes on the mystery of an apparently empty universe.Guests:Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk InstituteMichael Travisano, evolutionary biologist at the University of MinnesotaSara Seager, astrophysicist at MITSupport 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
- Sep 29, 202634 min
Take That, Death
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
- Sep 22, 202639 min
Bug Fight Club
You’re a critter in the forest, peacefully munching on a tree — until it’s chopped down, turned into a pallet, and you’re shipped across the ocean. What do you do? Sometimes, the answer is escape, find defenseless trees in your new home, and eat them to extinction. The emerald ash borer, spotted lanternfly, “murder hornet,” and other invasive insects have all threatened destruction across North America in the past few decades alone.Ben Bradford investigates why invasive bugs keep getting worse — and how, exactly, you’re supposed to stop millions of tiny creatures once they’ve decided they like it here. Schemes have grown increasingly intricate, including spy-movie hijinks, citizen squishers, the power of fire, and creating a Bug Fight Club. Only some of these work.Guests:Andrew Liebhold, Chief Scientist, Forest Invasion Synthesis CentreChris Looney, Washington State Department of Agriculture entomologist (and murder hornet MacGyver)Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpodAlso check out:How Do You Kill a Mosquito? 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
- Sep 15, 202634 min
Who Keeps Winding the Doomsday Clock?
“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
- Sep 8, 202635 min
Can "Scams" Be a Doom?
Scams are old. Mesopotamia old. Snake oil old. They haven’t doomed us yet.But investigative journalist Joseph Cox of 404 Media sees something changing: new technology is making the oldest cons more personal, more convincing, and much harder to check.Ben Bradford follows the scam from fake bosses and Nigerian princes to AI tools, celebrity deepfakes, and live video masks that can make a scammer look like someone you trust. But with Joseph, he also finds a few hallmarks that have accompanied cons throughout history, whether in ancient Sumer or a phishing email. Because as long as we can spot the spell scams seek to cast, we still have at least a chance to break it.Guest:Joseph Cox, investigative reporter and co-founder of 404 MediaSupport 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
- Sep 1, 202636 min
Just a Minor Sun Explosion
In 1859, the sky turned blood-red, telegraph machines sparked and chattered, and some of their batteries exploded. Then humanity responded by building a civilization that runs on electricity, satellites, GPS, internet cables, credit cards, and cellphone towers.Great work, everyone.Ben Bradford investigates the Carrington Event — the massive solar storm that fried the technology of its time — and asks what would happen if something like it hit our much more wired world today. Was Carrington a one-off? Are modern power grids, satellites, and internet infrastructure any safer than an 1859 telegraph? And if the sun does cough another piece of itself at us, is there anything we can actually do?Guests:Jim Green, former chief scientist of NASA and founder of MetavisionariesElizabeth Butler at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction CenterFor more threats from space, check out our episodes:"Asteroids! The Doom We're Best At""We Are Losing the Moon" (also with Jim Green)Also mentioned in this episode:"We Try and Kill the Internet"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
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About Are We Doomed?
Is the world ending, or does it just feel like it? "Are We Doomed?" investigates the greatest risks facing society, the planet, and our species. What’s real? What’s hype? And how do we actually make it out alive? Nukes. Asteroids. Autocracy. Rogue AI. Climate-driven pandemics. Angry hippopotamuses. Teeth clenched, curiosity engaged, quips ready, this “slightly narrative” podcast explores everything from the existential and the unexpected to the overblown. Award-winning public radio journalist Ben Bradford brings you wild true stories, high-production sound design, and world-class experts answering the questions they never prepared for (“Why is the Earth doing this to us?”). This show delves into history, science, technology, and the natural world, to help you separate legitimate world-changing risks from doomsday fantasies. Come for the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park (real), stay to learn why the post-apocalyptic wasteland won’t look like the movies (sorry, you won’t be wandering with a shotgun and a dog), and leave with a better understanding of how our brilliant, bumbling species can chart a path through our current, terrifying adolescence.
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