Short Stuff: Tick tock goes the Doomsday Clock

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – "Short Stuff: Tick Tock Goes the Doomsday Clock"

Release Date: April 16, 2025
Hosts: Josh and Chuck
Original Host: Jerry (substituting for Dave)
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

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1. Introduction

In this episode of "Short Stuff," hosts Josh and Chuck delve into the pressing issue of the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to catastrophic disaster. Sitting in for Jerry, who usually substitutes for Dave, the duo aims to provide listeners with an engaging and comprehensive overview of why the clock has been set to its closest point ever—89 seconds to midnight.

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2. What is the Doomsday Clock?

Josh begins by explaining the origins and purpose of the Doomsday Clock:

Josh [01:16]: "The Doomsday Clock is a metaphorical clock that is operated or overseen by the Bulletin Atomic Scientists, which was a group of scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project. They created it in 1947 as a graphic representation of how close humanity is to self-inflicted disaster, like a nuclear war."

Chuck appreciates Josh's explanation:

Chuck [01:56]: "Perfectly said, elegantly said."

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3. The Current Setting: 89 Seconds to Midnight

Chuck reveals the alarming update:

Chuck [02:35]: "This year, January 28, 2025, is when they moved the second hand on the clock forward to 89 seconds to midnight, which means it's the closest that clock has ever been to midnight since they started."

Josh contextualizes the change:

Josh [02:59]: "Since they started in 1947, when the US and Russia were ramping up the Cold War and nuclear testing, there was seven minutes to midnight. Now, we're less than two minutes away."

Chuck adds historical comparisons:

Chuck [03:50]: "The closest previous was two minutes. So that's pretty drastic."

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4. Reasons for the Clock Moving Closer

The hosts break down the multifaceted threats contributing to the clock's setting:

a. Geopolitical Tensions

• Ongoing War in Ukraine:

  Chuck [08:07]: "The ongoing war in Ukraine and the nuclear risks involved, especially in the third year of that conflict, pose significant dangers."

• Middle East Instability:

  Josh [08:45]: "The Middle East can spiral out of control and involve nuclear powers, increasing the risk of nuclear conflict."

• Nuclear Proliferation:

  Josh [09:27]: "Countries that previously had no nuclear ambitions are now considering developing nuclear programs, heightening global risks."

b. Climate Change

Chuck [09:27]: "Global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. Efforts like solar and wind energy are not advancing quickly enough to mitigate the damage."

c. Biological Threats

Chuck [10:03]: "The biological arena is terrifying, with threats like avian flu spreading to farm animals and humans, exacerbated by lingering effects of COVID-19."

d. Artificial Intelligence

Josh [10:36]: "Militaries are incorporating AI into battlefield decision-making, edging towards AI-controlled nuclear arsenals, which is a dangerous trajectory."

e. Misinformation and Disinformation

Chuck [11:26]: "The spread of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories is degrading the communication ecosystem, blurring truth and falsehood."

Josh [12:26]: "Misinformation undermines public discourse, making it harder to address the real threats the Doomsday Clock warns against."

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5. Criticisms of the Doomsday Clock

The hosts acknowledge skepticism surrounding the clock:

Josh [13:33]: "Lawrence Krauss pointed out that the Doomsday Clock isn't scientific. It's a metaphorical number arrived at through deliberation, making it somewhat arbitrary."

Chuck [14:09]: "National Geographic suggests that if everything is labeled a crisis, nothing stands out as a true crisis. The clock's multiple threats might dilute its original purpose."

Despite these criticisms, Josh emphasizes the clock's relevance:

Josh [14:09]: "It's meant to raise awareness, but the multitude of threats can make the message seem diluted, potentially causing people to disengage."

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6. Conclusion and Recommendations

Chuck shifts the conversation toward proactive measures:

Chuck [14:25]: "Whether or not you agree with the Doomsday Clock, I recommend the podcast series 'End of the World with Josh Clark' for a deeper understanding of existential threats."

Josh concurs, highlighting the importance of informed discourse:

Josh [14:57]: "Short Stuff aims to leave listeners wanting more, encouraging deeper exploration of critical issues."

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7. Final Thoughts

Throughout the episode, Josh and Chuck emphasize the urgency conveyed by the Doomsday Clock while balancing it with critical perspectives. They advocate for heightened awareness and informed discussions to navigate the complex and interrelated threats facing humanity today.

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Notable Quotes:

• Josh [04:31]: "The purpose of the Doomsday Clock is to frighten men into rationality."

• Chuck [11:26]: "The battered information landscape is also producing leaders who discount science and endeavor to suppress free speech and human rights, compromising the fact-based public discussions required to combat the enormous threats facing the world."

• Josh [13:38]: "How much longer is the world going to last?"

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Takeaway:
The Doomsday Clock serves as a stark reminder of the multifaceted threats threatening global stability, from nuclear proliferation and climate change to biological dangers and the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence and misinformation. While the clock's metaphorical nature has its critics, its role in fostering awareness and urging rational action remains pivotal in guiding humanity away from imminent peril.

Transcript

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[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the shortstop. I'm Josh, there's Chuck and we're sitting in for Jerry, who usually sits in for Dave. So yeah, let's go, let's go.

[Chuck]

This is. Well, it's a follow up to our Doomsday Clock episode, but it turns out we didn't do a Doomsday Clock episode. I know we've talked about this, so it might have been in one of when we were doing videos years ago. I think it was probably in one of those. But I know for a fact the only reason I would have known about this is because of this job and you.

[Josh]

That makes me feel good that I wasn't completely unaware that we had done an episode on doomsday clocks or the Doomsday clock.

[Chuck]

It popped up in some place. But what's the Doomsday Clock, Josh?

[Josh]

So the Doomsday clock is a metaphorical clock that is operated or overseen by the Bulletin Atomic Scientists, which was a group of scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project. They got together and they said we need to create a group that is going to basically keep an eye on this nuclear proliferation that's starting up. And one of the things they did in 1947 was create the Doomsday Clock. And it essentially is this. I guess it's a graphic representation of how close humanity is to self inflicted disaster. Like a nuclear war.

[Chuck]

Perfectly said, elegantly said.

[Josh]

Thank you.

[Chuck]

Yeah. So like you said, been around since 1947. They set the time every year. It's sort of a thing where they say, like, all right, the time for this year is going to be this. Would they move it forward if something really went down within a year?

[Josh]

I think they do it every year.

[Chuck]

So like in January they said it. And if like four months later, like the S goes down, they wouldn't be like, they'd be like, nope, gotta wait till next year.

[Josh]

Well, I think two things would happen. Either it would be something that they would take into account the next year. Yes. Or the world would end and they wouldn't have anything to do anyway.

[Chuck]

Okay. But again, we're talking about it this year because there was. And, you know, we'll talk about a little bit how it's fluctuated over the years. But the reason we bring it up is because this year, January 28, 2025, is when they moved the second hand on the clock forward to 89 seconds to midnight, which means it's the closest that clock has ever been to midnight. Since they started.

[Josh]

Yeah, since they started or when they started in 1947, when the US and Russia were starting the Cold War, creating nukes, testing nukes out in the open, underground, in space, There was seven minutes to midnight. We're now less than two minutes away from midnight because stuff is just so close to hitting the fan. And we should say that they've actually moved the clock backward. They've moved the second hand backwards further away from midnight in the past. And the furthest away it was from midnight was 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved. It was all the way back from 17 minutes to midnight, which is. I think. I think that's called Tiki time.

[Chuck]

Yeah. It's like Bust out the rum, everybody.

[Josh]

Exactly.

[Chuck]

We're all 17 minutes.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

The closest pre. This time in 2025 was in 1953. It was two minutes before midnight. So we are 89 seconds till midnight. And the closest previous was two minutes. So that's, you know, it's pretty drastic. And again, you know, I guess we can go ahead and mention one of the criticisms of this is that it's something that just gins up. The critics will say it's something that just gins up paranoia in people and, like, pushes the panic button. And what is it even doing? But what it's doing. I think it's a valuable thing. Cause it just raises awareness every year with people. It's just another thing to kind of say, hey, like, we're not headed in the right direction as humanity goes.

[Josh]

Yeah. So the first editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was Eugene Rabinowitz. And Eugene Rabinowitz said that the purpose of the Doomsday Clock is to, quote, frighten men into rationality.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And to basically say, like, hey, you know, this. This is where this stuff's out of control. People. You need to be paying attention to these things. Because they don't just say, we're 89 seconds from midnight. See you next year. They explain what the. What the reasoning is for moving or even not moving or moving back to secondhand. And this year being 89 seconds, the closest we've ever been, they had a whole crop of issues that go well beyond the nuclear risk that was originally the clock was originally designed to track. And I say we take a break and we come back and talk about why we're so close to midnight right now. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

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[Chuck]

All right everyone, we're back. We're 80 seconds to midnight, not 10 minutes to midnight like Charles Bronson was in that great movie.

[Josh]

What was it called? 10 minutes to midnight.

[Chuck]

Yeah, you didn't see that one?

[Josh]

No.

[Chuck]

You should check that out. It's got a couple of choice scenes. It's about a creepy serial killer that he's chasing.

[Josh]

Oh, Bronson's not the creepy serial killer. He's being chased by a creepy dude.

[Chuck]

Charles Bronson is always the guy on the hunt for the bad guy.

[Josh]

Have you ever seen Death Wish 3 where like the group of punks has taken over The Neighborhood.

[Chuck]

Yeah, all the Death wish movies. I mean, the first one was genuinely pretty good, but they got really sort of over the top after a while.

[Josh]

Yeah, it was good, though.

[Chuck]

That's good. You got the death wish, pal. This is my favorite impression to do, by the way.

[Josh]

I can't wait till you get your Morgan Freeman down.

[Chuck]

Oh, no, I don't think so. All right, so how do we get 89 seconds to midnight? This comes direct from the Bulletin website. Some. We can kind of summarize a few of these I'm just going to read outright because it's so like sort of expertly put. But the first thing is the ongoing war in Ukraine and the. And not just that, but the nuclear risk therein involved in the third year of that conflict that, you know, hopefully it doesn't go that way. Maybe things are wrapping up, but at the peak of this thing, like any weird bad decision could have led to something like that happening.

[Josh]

Yeah, same with the Middle east right now that can spiral out of control and suck in nuclear powers against one another. That's a nuclear risk for sure. And then we're back to increasing the size of our nuclear arsenals, which is a reverse of what we were doing in the 80s and 90s where we were getting rid of them. That's not a good sign. And then one other thing too, and this is definitely new. Countries that hadn't had nukes before were basically like, well, we're never going to have nukes because that's just not the way things are. That's changed geopolitically. And now countries are starting to think about developing their own nuclear programs where if you have more countries with more nukes, you have that much more risk.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. Climate change is the next thing they have listed. And, you know, this one kind of speaks for itself. We don't need to beat a dead horse. But their take basically is that global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. No one is doing enough to combat this. This is bringing on extreme weather and climate change event or climate change influenced events, and it's affecting people all over the world. And even if we're growing things like solar and wind, it's just not fast enough and not nearly enough to make a dent in the damage that's being done.

[Josh]

Right. Also there's the biological arena, as they put it.

[Chuck]

Oh, boy, this one is very scary.

[Josh]

That's the most mucus y arena.

[Chuck]

Yeah. But obviously coming out of COVID and with the avian flu now expanding, you know, to farm animals, to dairy products, human cases. All this stuff is very scary. And the point of this episode isn't to scare the crud out of everybody, but it's hard to read the stuff and not get the crud scared out of you sometimes.

[Josh]

Yeah. Also, don't leave AI on the sidelines. In their disruptive technology part. They were like, yes, AI. They didn't get into the existential threat that AI itself posed. They more looked at it like, hey, some militaries are starting to incorporate AI in their, like, battlefield decision making. Like, we're a step away from AIs deciding whether to kill or not kill and then eventually giving AI's control over our nuclear arsenals. And that's not a direction we want to be going. And then the whole thing, this is the reason why all these things that have been around for a while or have been developing for a while have been accelerated to 89 seconds from midnight because of the threat multiplier of misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And this is the one I wanted to read a part or two from this because it just kind of speaks volumes of things. They really put it very succinctly. Spread of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories that degrade the communication ecosystem increasingly blur the lines between truth and falsehood. And then they talk about AI making it even. You know, we've talked about deepfake video and stuff like that, like making all that stuff just so much easier. And then this final line is really, really good. The battered information landscape is also producing leaders who discount science and endeavor to suppress free speech and human rights, compromising the fact based public discussions that are required to combat the enormous threats facing the world. So, like, all of the problems that we've been listing are bad enough. And then when you've got disinformation and conspiracy theories and misinformation thrown on top of that and AI exacerbating all that, that's when it's like they're moving that clock as close to midnight as they've ever been.

[Josh]

Yeah. And the reason why is because people would be under that circumstance, they're being led away from paying attention to the stuff the Doomsday Clock is warring against. And that just makes it that much riskier too, because we have to be paying attention to it whether you like it or not. For some reason, when I was researching this today, I was like, this is striking me as a little ridiculous and I get the point of it and I think it is noble and worthy, but there's also some real, I don't know, real criticisms of it. And I found one piece by a guy named Steven Johnson on Lifehacker, and he interviewed Lawrence Krauss, who's a physicist and a member of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Sorry, the New Republic interviewed Krauss, and he said, it's not scientific. It's a number that's arrived at by a group of people exploring each of the questions, then having a huge amount of discussion and ultimately convergence on a number. That number is, frankly, arbitrary. And that's true. You have to remember it's a metaphor. There's no way to measure it.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

Okay, if we're 89 seconds from midnight right now, how much longer is the world going to last?

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And the big problem with it, I think, is National Geographic put it, if everything's a crisis, nothing's a crisis. So before the whole thing was created to say this one thing, nuclear proliferation, this is what we're warning about. Now you've got climate change, AI, avian flu, disinformation. It's just like, being piled on. And I think it's. It's really diluted the. The point and the pointedness of the whole thing.

[Chuck]

Yeah, maybe, but that's also the world we're living in right now.

[Josh]

Yeah, but it makes it so easy to just be like, oh, well, I give up. I'm gonna just go pay attention to, I don't know, flowers versus zombies. Do people play that still?

[Chuck]

I didn't know that was a thing.

[Josh]

I think it was at some point. Unless I had a fever dream.

[Chuck]

Well, you didn't have a fever dream. One thing. Whether or not you agree with the Doomsday Clock or not, one thing I can recommend, because you're too humble to, is a little limited podcast series called the End of the World with Josh Clark. That way you can really learn something and take a deep dive into real existential threats that face humanity.

[Josh]

Thanks, Chuck. I appreciate that.

[Chuck]

Holds up still great, I imagine. I haven't gone back and listened to it again. I bet it still holds up, though.

[Josh]

Yeah, well, because one of the number one rules in show businesses leave them wanting more. I say short stuff is out.

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[Chuck]

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