Podcast
Are We Doomed?
Hosted by NPR Network · EN
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?”). From NuanceTales and distributed by the NPR Network, 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.
12episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Is Geoengineering A Good Idea?
Yesterday00:39:07Summary readyThe planet is heating up, every plan to stop it has fallen short, and growing group of scientists has started to ask a stranger question: what if we grabbed the thermostat ourselves? Ben Bradford investigates geoengineering — the science of deliberately manipulating Earth’s climate — from space mirrors and ocean fertilizers to fleets of planes mimicking a volcano. Some of it sounds like cartoon villainy. Some of it might actually work. And that raises the thornier question: if humans can cool the planet on purpose, who decides whether we should?Guests:Kate Ricke, climate change scientist at UCSDAlan Robock, atmospheric scientist at RutgersSupport 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
SummaryThe True AI Threat is People
1w ago00:35:49Summary readyImagine 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 InstituteSupport 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
SummaryThe Literal Reverse Apocalypse
2w ago00:31:32Summary readyAre 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
SummaryAre We Going the Way of the Roman Empire?
3w ago00:37:16Summary readyHistorically, 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
SummaryWe Try and Kill the Internet
4w ago00:32:48Summary readyThe 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
SummaryPast Dooms That Didn't Arrive
May 2600:34:24Summary readyPeople 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
SummaryHow To Survive a Nuclear War
May 1900:37:40Summary readyThe 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
SummaryHow Do You Kill a Mosquito?
May 1200:35:13Summary readyMosquitoes 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
SummarySupervolcano!
May 500:40:45Summary readyA 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
SummaryLet’s Design the AI That Kills Us All
Apr 2800:35:37Summary readyMaddeningly, 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
Summary