The Literal Reverse Apocalypse

Summary

Are We Doomed? (NPR Network)

Episode: The Literal Reverse Apocalypse
Host: Ben Bradford
Guest: Jason Pargin (Author, Internet Commentator)
Date: June 16, 2026

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode challenges the pervasive sense of imminent doom that saturates our media and collective psyche. Host Ben Bradford and guest Jason Pargin (author of “I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom”) explore the paradox: are we truly approaching apocalypse, or are we living through humanity’s golden age—yet blinded to progress by our evolved brains and the amplified negativity of the internet?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Doom or Golden Age? The Central Debate

(Starts at 00:21)

• Ben opens with a scene from Jason’s satirical novel: a possibly-bomb-laden SUV headed for the U.S. Capitol, sparking wild rumors online—a metaphor for society’s fear of disaster.

• The episode’s core question:
  “Are we in horrifying apocalyptic times headed toward doom, or did we hit the jackpot being born in this moment?” (Ben Bradford, 01:22)

• Jason Pargin (03:17):

  “Every problem is presented as if, if this continues, it could be the end of our civilization. So, yeah, you feel like there are 30 serial killers hiding in your yard and you’re just waiting to see which one gets you.”

Pushback: Real Suffering Exists

• Ben resists reductive optimism, naming homelessness, mass shootings, famine, and political unrest as “worst of times” issues (03:56).
• Jason’s counterpoint:

  “By every possible measure, we are living in the golden age of civilization.” (04:28)

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2. Metrics for Human Progress

(05:42 – 10:20)

• Child Mortality:
  For most of history “on average, one out of every two kids died” (06:18); now, less than 1 in 20 die globally.

• Violence:
  Murder “was about 10 times more likely in medieval Europe, 70 times more likely in the stabbiest place, which was 1400s Italy.” (06:55)

• Starvation:
  “You are less likely to die of starvation now than at any point that the species has been around.” (07:03)

• Other advances:

  • Clean water, healthcare, communication, longer lifespan, ease of travel (“the number of people who just have roads, paved roads, they can drive on now, is mind-boggling compared to where it was just in the 90s.” — Jason, 10:03).

But: Persistent Inequalities

• Ben notes disparities: e.g., life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa is 64, Europe is nearly 80, income inequality, famine still exist (07:39).
• Yet, even at current global “worse off”, many have better conditions than 19th-century England’s 45-year life expectancy.

Notable Quote:

“Your entire lifespan has been spent in a literal reverse apocalypse.”
— Character in Jason’s novel (10:20)

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3. Why Don’t We Notice Progress?

(12:04, 14:06, 15:43, 16:17)

• Blame the Internet:
  Jason, an internet-native writer and accidental influencer (over 1.4 million followers), argues our sense of doom is “the Internet itself driving our sense of doom.” (16:17)
• Ben recaps the satirical elements of Jason’s novel: rumors, mob outrage, live-streamed confrontations, rampant misinformation—mirroring real online hysteria (16:21).

The Neurology of Doomscrolling

• Jason:

  “The human brain did not evolve to handle all of the people in the world’s thoughts being screamed in our ear 24 hours a day... So by nature, if you’re online a lot, you’re going to focus on the threats. You start to get a sense that every tree has a tiger behind it.” (17:36)

Stories vs. Statistics

• “Your brain did not evolve to process statistics. Your brain evolved to process stories. So 25 stories of a Toyota owner killing his kids… it’s a world of 8 billion people.” (18:47)

• Online, our sense of risk grows wildly disproportionate as we gorge on viral “tigers and Toyotas,” magnifying anecdotal horror and missing broader statistical reality.

• Jason:

  “It frustrates me that I think there’s this unspoken rule that you have to—as long as somebody somewhere is suffering—you can’t be happy or optimistic or anything. You can’t live like that.” (11:14)

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4. Personal Anecdotes: Living in the Internet’s Doom Machine

(20:24 – 21:46)

• Jason describes early internet experiences:

  “I think I was on the Internet for maybe an hour before somebody told me to kill myself.” (12:25, 20:24)

• He notes the compulsion to seek outrage:

  “I’m sitting here all day long, sifting and sifting and sifting for something that will make me angry.” (21:10)

• Ben highlights a poignant idea from Jason's novel:

  “Everything that happens on our screens, it’s like a filter that only shows you others’ bad behavior... it traps your brain in a prison.” (21:46)

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5. The “Donut” Analogy: Modern Risks Are Miracles' Side Effects

(26:23 – 29:47)

• Discussion pivots to vending machine donuts as metaphor:
  • Donuts are modern miracles (“If you had taken that back 300 years ago, they would think you were a wizard.” — Jason, 27:06)
  • Yet they cause new problems—obesity epidemic.
  • “All of these apocalyptic threats are side effects of our success.” (28:27)

“Donuts” Redefined:

• Key existential risks (nuclear war, climate change, internet-driven insanity) are spawned by solving old problems (food scarcity, energy shortages, communication limits).

  “The damage we’ve done to the environment... was done in the name of building a world where the access to food and energy and transportation... is better than it ever was in the past.” (28:34)

• “Even if we go to completely clean energy, somebody will use that clean energy to power a death ray.”
  — Jason, wryly underscoring how problem-solving breeds new risks (29:21)

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6. Infinite Problems—but Better Ones

(30:44 – 32:22)

• Civilizations always create novel challenges as they overcome old ones.

• Example:

  • Past overpopulation fears (“The Population Bomb”) replaced by underpopulation anxiety.

    “Instead of turning off the fire alarm, you just switch it to a different tone. It’s like, ah, now it’s the non-fire alarm. There’s not enough fire.” (31:28)

• Jason’s stance:

  “Now, for the first time, we have more children in the world who are obese than are starving. It’s always like this. It’s always going to be like this. And my position is I would prefer these challenges to the ones of the past…” (31:49)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Living in Doom:

  "If you find yourself waking up every day thinking that the world is doomed or that people suck, I'm sorry, if you turn the phone off and just go out and walk around, you'll get a different view."
  — Jason Pargin (22:58)

• On Historical Perspective:

  “Just the part I saw was terrible compared to what we have now... my version of optimism is that I saw the past.”
  — Jason Pargin (04:45)

• On Modern Progress:

  “You don’t have to go back that far in our history... when it was difficult to recruit young men for the military because many had goiters or so many were missing most of their teeth.”
  — Jason Pargin (08:41)

• Donuts as Symbol:

  “We have created a miracle that we don’t know how to contain because we obviously did not physically evolve for this world.”
  — Jason Pargin (27:30)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------| | 00:21 | Doom debate introduction; SUV black box scene | | 03:17 | Why we feel doomed: "serial killers in your yard" | | 05:42 | Human progress metrics: mortality, violence, starvation | | 07:39 | Inequality and persistent global challenges | | 10:20 | "Literal reverse apocalypse" argument | | 12:25 | The Internet as the engine of doomerism | | 15:43 | Jason’s rise as an influencer & internet commentator | | 17:36 | "Brain as tiger detector" - why online feels so threatening | | 20:24 | Jason’s internet history and anger-seeking behavior | | 21:46 | “Screens trap you in a prison” (from Jason's novel) | | 26:23 | Donut analogy—modern problems as miracles’ side effects | | 28:27 | Climate change and progress' double edge | | 31:28 | Overpopulation to underpopulation fears: "switching fire alarms" | | 32:22 | Preferring modern problems to historical ones |

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Tone & Style

• Conversational and dryly comic: The hosts and guest exchange biting, self-aware quips while remaining earnest about serious issues.
• Skeptical optimism: Statistical reality is pitted against emotional instinct and modern “doomerism.”
• Relatable and vivid metaphors: From SUV dirty bombs to snack-sleeve donuts, complex themes are made accessible—and funny.

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Conclusion

Rather than offering a simple reassurance or stoking further fear, this episode complicates doom. It acknowledges both historic progress and looming new threats, arguing that many modern dangers—climate risk, digital mayhem—are "donuts": side effects of past triumphs. According to Jason, we're not doomed—we’re just overwhelmed by our own success and how the internet makes every threat seem omnipresent. The real risk, the episode suggests, is that our obsession with doom may blind us to humanity's upward trajectory and erode the collaborative resolve required to solve the truly existential threats we face next.

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Next Episode Teaser:
Exploring the dangers of “dumb” AI and how humanity could make catastrophic mistakes with artificial intelligence.

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For more:
Listen to bonus content and support the show at dunpod.com/support.
Find the animated edition on YouTube: youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod

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Transcript

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[Ben Bradford (Host)]

A white SUV rolls along Interstate 40, the waistband of the US coast to coast, it's one of our longest highways. Steadily, the SUV chews up ground making its way from California to Washington, D.C. what's in the trunk? In the black chest with the Is that a radiation sticker? Rumors swirl in the SUV's wake. Internet sleuths have put together clues that this unremarkable vehicle could have in that black chest a hot wired radioactive explosive, a dirty bomb. And if they're right, it will go off when the vehicle reaches the nation's capital and it will blow the US into civil war. That's a scene from a novel called I Am Starting to Worry about this Black Box of Doom. It's a dark comedy that came out in 2024. I tried to pick it up for some light reading. I know even in my free time I'm reading about doom. I can't explain it, but it turned out that the book and the characters in the suv, maybe carrying a bomb, are having a sprawling, heated debate that we need to talk about. It goes something like are we in horrifying apocalyptic times headed toward doom, or did we hit the jackpot being born in this moment? Humans broadly have literally never had it better, and if you feel otherwise, it is because you have absorbed a myth. Forget the book. We have to have that debate. Is this the end times or grim as it may often feel the best of times? This is Are We Doomed? A production of Nuanced tales distributed by the NPR Network. I'm Ben Bradford.

[Angie (Advertisement Voice)]

We are doomed.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I have to issue a disclaimer because every time I do any kind of a video or an article about doom or the end of the world, some cataclysm happens somewhere in the world. It will be unrelated.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Yeah, you're not talking about individual bad thing. And you didn't cause individual bad thing. You didn't summon it into an existence by talking to me.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

So you say that is my official position?

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Yes, to properly introduce what you're hearing. This is Jason Pargen. He wrote the book I mentioned with the SUV and the black box and the debate about doom. I'm not usually looking to interview novelists. No offense to fiction. Fiction rocks. But Jason, I Called because he has spent a decade increasingly obsessed with this. Are we doomed or do we just feel doomed? His book is jammed with real statistics, history, and sophisticated treatment of concepts like how civilizations collapse. Jason argues we feel doomed because we are bombarded from every direction all the time with unremitting bad news.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Every problem is presented as if this continues, it could be the end of our civilization. So, yeah, you feel like there are 30 serial killers hiding in your yard and you're just waiting to see which one gets you.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

If you turn on local TV news, you get accidents, fires, murders. Pick up a paper because you're 90. It's wars and scandals. If you're on the Internet, well, don't go on the Internet. It's worst of times all the time.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

And even if you think that things are going pretty good in your own life, you would get the impression, well, yeah, but it's just all downhill from here.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Now. Clearly the danger and tragedy of our times is not just perception. And I pushed back to not just dismiss that. I mean, I think that I walk around in Los Angeles and I walk around streets where people are in unremitting squalor, living in tents, having a pretty bad time of it. We hear every day about mass shootings. We know that we have rising political violence, erosion of democratic freedoms. We have famine in Darfur. I mean, these are really horrible things, right? I mean, those are worst of times things.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

And yet we are by every possible measure living in the golden age of civilization.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

This is Jason's contention that this moment, broadly, despite all all of its horrors, is the pinnacle for the human species. So far that we're doing it.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

None of this is to dismiss the problems of the present. My version of optimism is that I saw the past. I'm 50 years old. Just the part I saw was terrible compared to what we have now. Just in my lifetime, What Jason is

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

about to argue, the evidence he's about to throw at you, he says you may just reject outright. He says, even though the statistics you're about to hear are correct, and I will say I have fact checked them, people often refuse to believe him or they move their goalposts. So before we hear him out, maybe it's worth taking a moment to ask ourselves, what would convince us? What metric would sway you that we humans are on an upward trajectory, not hurtling into decline, that this is the best it's ever been and we'll see if he can hit that? Okay, try and convince us, Jason.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

What you describe as squalor is how everybody used to live not that long ago. And the percentage of people on Earth living in squalor is lower now than at any time in the entire history of the species. And these are not opinions that by any tangible means by which you can measure standard of living, all of them are better now than they've been at any point that we know about. And that's even if you just stick to the things that everybody agrees are important, like the percentage of children who die before they grow up.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

For most of human history, the number of kids who died before adulthood remained stubborn in every society from our days as hunter gatherers, as ancient civilizations rose and fell. While Shakespeare wrote plays, while Michelangelo dangled from ceilings all the way to the industrial revolution, on average, one out of every two kids died. Now, globally, child mortality is about 4%, less than 1 in 20, Jason notes. Your odds of early unpleasant death have dropped, too.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

If you're an adult, the chances of dying from violence.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Murder was about 10 times more likely in medieval Europe, 70 times more likely in the stabbiest place, which was 1400s Italy.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

The chances of dying from starvation. You are less likely to die of starvation now than at any point that the species has been around.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Broadly, if we're using survivability as a metric of human progress, the arrow has pointed up. And Jason says that's true of other aspects of happy life.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

You can pick any subject and things have gotten not just a little bit better, they've gotten spectacularly better. Access to clean water, access to healthcare, access to your ability to connect with your loved ones via communication or travel or anything like that.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Of course, there's wide disparity, right? We do have famines. We've seen them in Darfur and Gaza. People in Europe may live to almost 80 on average, but in Sub Saharan Africa, it's 64. Income inequality is on the rise. In much of the world, life expectancy is flattening. So, sure, things may be great for Jason or me, and things are fine for me, but how can you possibly argue that with the gaps this large? This is the apex of the species. Jason is saying even areas of the globe with the least are better off than they were when ye olde England in the 1800s enjoyed the world's highest life expectancy. It was a robust 45 years. I'm not sure. It's hard to argue that most of us are better off from the days of muskets and scurvy. But Jason is going further, more recent. He thinks we don't recognize how much less grueling and Painful life has become in just, say, the last century.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

You don't have to go back that far in our history, only to around World War I, when it was difficult to recruit young men for the military because many had goiters or so many were missing most of their teeth.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

The army found one in three recruits unfit for service due to health problems or go after World War II, often remembered as the boom times.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

But something like at one point, a third of all beds had bed bugs in them.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

I think you said 1950.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Yeah. I think if you went back in time to like the post war years of the 1950s and just that would be shocked by how long it takes to do everything, how long it takes to cook a meal, how long it takes to shop, how much harder it is to find the stuff that you

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

need, how small the houses are you mentioned. Yeah, homes were easier to buy, an expression of the American dream. But they're also a third of today's size and often lacked indoor plumbing.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

It's like, well, back then, one working man on a salary could take his whole family to Florida. And it's like, no, the reason planes were nice back then is because nobody used them. People, the average working person could not afford to fly. A lot of what you hate about the world is the beach is too crowded. It's like, yeah, more people can access the beach now.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

He says, we don't have to go back that far to see progress. Try 1990.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

The number of people who just have roads, paved roads they can drive on now, is mind boggling compared to where it was just in the 90s. A number of people who have gotten their first, not just air conditioning, but their first electric lights, their first flush toilets.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Billions with a B. A character in Jason's book rails in frustration at another. Your entire lifespan has been spent in a literal reverse apocalypse. What do we think? How does this argument match up to your personal metrics? I'll suggest that Jason's analysis matters because it might not jive with our worldviews. His position is that humanity has been on an enormous run, despite all the agonies, with better life expectancy, access to water, food and power, less stabbing and bed bugs. But we don't recognize it. He says people often refuse to believe these statistics when he presents them. Does the focus on the things that are bad, and especially the focus on doom, the thought that we're headed toward collapse, does it frustrate you?

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

It frustrates me that I think there's this unspoken rule that you have to. As long as somebody somewhere is suffering. You can't be happy or optimistic or anything. You can't live like that. Nobody wants to live like that. If there's some action I can take to help them, then yeah. But to have to constantly say, the world's on fire, the world's on fire, and that proves that I'm one of the good guys, that is suicidal.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Are we doomed or do we just feel doomed? I personally wonder whether one can lead to the other because we don't recognize our progress. Are we going to let it slip away? Also, while we humans were doing all this amazing stuff, we've created some other modern minor issues that could be concerning.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I'm going away to the Roman Empire.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

We're going to debate all of that. But first, if it's so obvious how much better we have it now, say Jason is right. Why do any of us think otherwise? Why is a culture of doomerism spreading? This is the other reason I called Jason, because he knows what he wants to blame.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I think I was on the Internet for maybe an hour before somebody told me to kill myself.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

If you feel doomed, he says, blame the Internet.

[Malcolm Gladwell (Guest Host for IBM Smart Talks Advertisement)]

Support for NPR comes from IBM On Smart Talks with IBM, host Malcolm Gladwell speaks with leaders who are pushing the boundaries of AI and technology in partnership with IBM. Hello.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I sat down with Alon Cohen, who leads research and development at ufc, to discuss the complexity of. Of using technology to analyze fight data. With kick to the head, it makes contact with the outside of my arm, which I brought up. In our world, that's, that's a blocked strike. Yeah, but teaching a computer what exactly that means and when and how, like when my arm is up, that's a block. When my arm is down and hits my shoulder, that's not. It's those nuances that proved incredibly difficult for machines to be able to handle for a very, very long time. That is, until IBM entered the octagon.

[Malcolm Gladwell (Guest Host for IBM Smart Talks Advertisement)]

Listen to Smart Talks With IBM wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Testing. Hold on, I'm testing. Testing, one, two, three.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Oh, that's great. It's very rare to find somebody who has the whole setup. It was weird. Book authors are always trying to talk to you through a tinny computer speaker while their cat fights an air conditioner in the background. But when I called Jason Pargen, his recording setup was too good. He was strangely knowledgeable.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

It's low, but it like pegs out at like negative 15 something.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

It turned out there was a reason it ends up being relevant.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Yeah, no, this has become my life very recently.

[Malcolm Gladwell (Guest Host for IBM Smart Talks Advertisement)]

Really.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I used to write anonymously. I used to not show my face anywhere. But the world changed.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Jason was a best selling author. He was most known for his first book, the cult hit John Dies at the End of the. It was turned into a movie with Paul Giamatti. He wrote a bunch of sequels. But a couple years ago it was time to promote another book and his agent had some advice, told me to

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

look into a thing called TikTok. Because they're like, well, you've been to a bookstore, they've got a whole shelf.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Social media influencers now get prominent display if they publish a book.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

You got to get on TikTok. And it's like, I'm a 47 year old man.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

But Jason created an account, he started posting and it blew up.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I started doing the short videos and now that's the only thing anybody knows me for, really. I have 1.4 million followers across TikTok and Reels and YouTube shorts and none of those people. I only got on there to tell them about the books and none of them read.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Jason does trivia and science facts. His handle is Jason K. Pargin, by the way.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I make my living online. I make videos every day. I don't skip a day.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

But here's what makes this most weird and relevant. The reason I called Jason was because I had just read his most recent book. I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom. And it had two themes. The first one, we've talked about whether we're living in the best of times or the end times. The second, it is the Internet itself driving our sense of doom. So Jason's living in this world and making his living from this world. That he thinks is the problem.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

The irony of it has not escaped me. No.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

In the book, a minor influencer who rates fast food on the streaming platform Twitch announces he's going away for a bit. Rumors start first in his chat and then sprawling across the Broader Internet he that he's been kidnapped, that he's been radicalized, that he's in league with aliens. Social media sleuths and charlatans gather evidence, some of it true, some of it absurd, some of it both. It turns out the missing influencer is at the wheel of that SUV with a black chest in the back that might be a bomb. A teenager reading the discourse on Reddit decides to be a hero. He grabs a rifle to stop the SUV and streams the confrontation live. Over the course of the novel, the Internet hive mind shapes events. People are doxxed, people are swatted. People have the worst moments of their lives captured for posterity. And what's true never seems quite as important as what's most interesting. It is as searing and darkly funny of a description of the cacophony of the Internet as I've ever seen. Jason believes that if you feel doomed, it's not because we are. It's because of our exposure to this cacophony.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

The human brain did not evolve to handle all of the people in the world's thoughts being screamed in our ear 24 hours a day. Your brain is primed to see threats. You evolved so that if there's five trees and one of them has a tiger behind it, the person who said, well, philosophically, we should appreciate all five of the trees equally, that person got eaten. You focus on the one that has the tiger. So by nature, if you're online a lot, you're going to focus on the threats. You start to get a sense that every tree has a tiger behind it.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

This actually lines up with a lot of research by psychologists, misinformation experts, technologists, and I'll say, also just reporting that I've done about how the Internet polarizes us and puts us in our own separate bubbles of information. Because whatever we're scared of or angry about, we can basically find more of it.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

If you've decided that people who drive Toyota cars are murderers, you could find examples. Drove a Toyota, killed his whole family. This guy drove a Toyota, murdered six children.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

And then you say Toyotas are terrible. See, I can prove it.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

At no point are you doing the statistical analysis of. Well, now hold on. The base rate of murder among the general population versus Toyota owners. No, because your brain did not evolve to process statistics. Your brain evolved to process stories. So 25 stories of a Toyota owner killing his kids. How many more examples do you need? That's like. Well, logically, you'd need a bunch more. It's a world of 8 billion people.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

But now you're scared of Toyotas and outraged by people who drive them. And your worldview is maybe a little darker for it. And Jason says this is happening all, all the time now.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Watch a video of some lady in a grocery store shouting horrible things at the cashier. A woman in the stands of a baseball game taking a foul ball away from a child. Here's a guy mistreating his dog I saw in the park. He kicked his dog. We caught it on camera. Let's find this guy. They're far angrier about this than about an entire genocide in Africa.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

It's tigers and Toyotas. Tigers and Toyotas everywhere.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

You're in a world of 8 billion people. Somebody's kicking a dog right now somewhere. I'm telling you, it could be way

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

less dog kicks than there used to be 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 50 years ago. But we see way more dog kicks.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

It almost certainly is.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

If it feels like the world is ending, could it be not that it is, but that real progress is just covered up by the tigers and toy of our Internet? Yeah, you know, I guess I just. I am really interested in how you sort of came to this viewpoint.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Yeah, I mean, I've been online since 1995. I think I was on the Internet for maybe an hour before somebody told me to kill myself.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Jason recalls. He was a teenager. Home Internet was basically new.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I think I was on there for a week before I found somebody saying, we should just exterminate all of the. Whatever race they didn't like. And if you're saying, wow, Jason, you fell right into a group of extremists. No, it was a chat room for Chicago sports fans.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Over time, as the Internet and Jason grew up together, he noticed he wasn't just bumping into negative feelings. He logged onto new social media apps, Facebook, Twitter, then TikTok, you know, the classic progression, and started looking for his own tigers.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I'm sitting here all day long, sifting and sifting and sifting for something that will make me angry. I detected myself doing that. Look, here's a photo on Reddit of a guy who has parked badly. He has, like, a big, obnoxious pickup truck, and he's parked across four parking spaces. There's a subreddit for bad parking. You can just do this all day. I'm angry because this person a thousand miles away briefly parked badly. And also this photo is from five years ago.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Yeah.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

So five years ago, a total stranger a thousand miles away park badly for a few minutes, and now you're mad. It has ruined my morning.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Yeah. A character says in Jason's book. I have this theory that everything that happens on our screens, it's like a filter that only shows you others bad behavior, blocking the pure and letting through the poison to make you scared of everyone who isn't exactly identical to you. I think that long term it traps your brain in a prison. That it's designed to keep you inside alone with only those screens for comfort.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

I don't have a lot of friends. That's why I wrote this book. I'm from the point of view of somebody who found Community online because I didn't have one in real life and over the years realized this is a lot of fun, but it's not the same thing. It doesn't fill the same needs to Jason.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

The torrent of information pouring from our devices all the time, throwing tigers and Toyotas at us, is its own black box of doom. As nefarious as whatever is in the back of that suv, it blots out the progress we've made, the longer lifespans, the lack of goiters, the lack of stabbing. And if we could get away for just a bit, we would appreciate our reverse apocalypse.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

If you find yourself waking up every day thinking that the world is doomed or that people suck, I'm sorry, if you turn the phone off and just go out and walk around, you'll get a different view.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

I'm not sure I agree. I mean, I know what he said about standards of living around the world going up is right. I think it's really important to recognize. I think how he describes our current media ecosystem is pretty dead on too. We should probably do something about that. But it is not a hallucination that in the past few generations we've created new existential risks. We're exploring them on this show. Nuclear crisis, extreme climate change, large scale biological attack. We've heard experts sounding their own alarms.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

This really terrifies me. Nobody would rationally want nuclear war. That's not quite correct.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Every single complex society's ever existed in the history of the world so far has collapsed. Do we think we're different? How can you say we just feel doomed to that. And most of all, I think I worry that Jason is right, that we have built incredible progress, but since we don't recognize it, we're gonna throw it away. Because if we are all drowning in tigers and Toyotas, if we're swiping at shadows within our black boxes of doom, how can we possibly come together to solve our big real problems or as another character in Jason's novel snaps. We think the world is ending because the world is ending. What about that? Obviously, the answer up next is Donuts.

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[Ben Bradford (Host)]

not artisanal flavored with orange peel and cacao. We're talking vending machine truck stop, little plastic sleeves of donuts. Jason Parchan, Author, Accidental TikTok Star Voice of Antidumerism says, within those crinkly cylinders we can find the solution to all that we've discussed, because those sleeves of donuts are terrible for you.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Like we scold each other for oh, you're eating all this ultra processed food

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

stuffed with added sugar.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Oh, it's got, look at the label,

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

almost your entire daily value of saturated fat.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

It's got all these chemicals.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

And yet, Jason says, viewed another way, the delicious poisonous doughnut is a miracle.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

The chemicals are what keep it from spoiling, that you have stuff you can just grab and eat without any preparation. If you had taken that back 300 years ago, they would think you were a wizard.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Are we doomed or do we just feel doomed? The donut, to Jason, is the example of humanity's upward trajectory. The reason we'll keep going, that we're not doomed.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

We have created a miracle that we don't know how to contain because we obviously did not physically evolve for this world. We've changed it too quickly.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

The donut symbolizes that humans overcame an enormous historic problem, not being able to produce enough food. And it spawned other problems.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

And that's why you had obesity running rampant. We did not evolve for a world where you could reach out with your arm and grab a snack cake and have it in your mouth five seconds later. That's. That was never how food worked at any point in our evolution. It's difficult. But I wouldn't go back to a period of food scarcity because of the obesity crisis, even though obesity kills people.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Jason thinks our biggest challenges today, nuclear war, climate change, the Internet driving us insane. They're donuts.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

All of these apocalyptic threats are side effects of our success.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Take climate change as an example.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

The damage we've done to the environment, that was done in the name of building a world where the access to food and energy and transportation and all of those things is better than it ever was in the past.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

And so an optimistic take is that environmental destruction, climate change is just the latest problem in front of us that we haven't solved yet. Yet. I'm not sold. That's so given or did we build this moment of high quality health and of new leisure and air conditioning and comfort and all of these things that you're describing, but in a way that is unsustainable and that we simply cannot cope with? It was great for a moment and we're doomed.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

But that's always going to be true. The moment early man invented the ability to create fire, he gained the ability to cook his food and also to burn down his village. Like it will be true. Even if we go to completely clean energy, somebody will use that clean energy to power a death ray.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

Buy the new death ray now. 100% clean energy, non animal tested.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

That's just going to be the trade off.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

What Jason is arguing reminds me of something that I heard when I was reporting out our last episode about how civilizations fall. I was talking to Ian Morris, our historian of Rome, and he laid out a theory. Societies become more and more sophisticated over time, better able to deal with the problems they're facing. And as the societies become more sophisticated, they just, they create more sophisticated problems. Humans are always churning out new donuts, fixing old problems which spawn new ones. Ian was saying eventually the donuts pile up too high and society can't handle them. They go over the edge of the cliff. Viewed another way, though, we can only have today's problems because we have made it through the problems of the past, problems that previous generations believed would doom them.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

And all of those problems back then seemed unsolvable. My whole life, I saw a bestselling book called the Population Bomb.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

We talked about this in our episode about past dooms that did not come true. Overpopulation, death by baby.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Yeah, and every movie was about this. There's too many people, and that's going to cause disorder and starvation.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

That was wrong. And so Jason says, what happened when the population Bomb turned into a dude? Instead of patting ourselves on the back, he says, we just replaced death by baby with new fears. We made a new donut. In this case, underpopulation. That we won't have enough babies, that we're in an aging crisis.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Like, okay, you just, instead of turning off the fire alarm, you just switch it to a different tone. It's like, ah, now it's the non fire alarm. There's not enough fire.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

We fear overpopulation, then we fear underpopulation. Or we spend most of human history trying to grow enough food. And once we have it, what happens? We get donuts.

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

Now, for the first time, we have more children in the world who are obese than are starving. It's always like this. It's always going to be like this. And my position is I would prefer these challenges to the ones of the past because you could have said the exact same thing about any of the ones we were facing 50, 100, 150 years ago. I prefer these. They may be insurmountable. I don't know. I can't predict the future. But they are not more insurmountable than the ones I grew up with, or my grandparents grew up with, or my great grandparents grew up with.

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

There's a profane artist in. I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom. And one chapter starts. The universe had been trying to murder Zeke from the moment he was born. His parents were told he wouldn't survive infancy, then childhood. Each time he surpassed some doomer milestone. The doctors acknowledged the diagnosis had probably been incorrect. A month ago, he noticed a periodic tremor in his drawing hand. So what? He'd figure it out. Jason bets we too will figure it out. We've spent the last couple episodes exploring how societies collapse and whether we're headed there. If you're into that theme, we have a new bonus episode about a mysterious ancient society that fell, maybe for the better, start to see signs of mass human sacrifice. The counterintuitive side effect of some past collapses, the role of wealth inequality, and an expert who dares ask, should we go the way of the Roman Empire After Rome falls apart, people get taller and healthier. That is available right now as a thank you for supporters of the show. You can listen to it [e-mail] support and thank you to everybody who has become a supporter so far. It's going to be what allows us to make this show the way we're doing it. And next week on Are We Doomed? We've explored fears AI will get too smart and come after us. What if it's too dumb? That's the kind of thing that keeps

[Jason Pargin (Author and Interviewee)]

me up at night looking at the

[Ben Bradford (Host)]

ways we humans could make big mistakes with AI and how to stop that. Are We Doomed? Is a production of Nuanced Tales. I'm Ben Bradford. Our producer is Lindsey Kilbride. Our sound designer and engineer is Jay Sebold. Our editor is Tracy Samuelson. We're on YouTube, fully animated each episode. YouTube.com sign are WeDoomedPod. Animation is by Alboris Kamalasad. The show is distributed by the NPR Network. Huge thanks as always to Dan McCoy, Kalia Ali and the rest of the team at NPR. And thank you for listening. See you next week.

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