Are We Doomed?

Sand is everywhere. Beaches. Rivers. Deserts full of powdery dunes. How could we possibly run out?

Journalist Vince Beiser has dug deep into the past century — and more — of human construction and found one tiny grain at its foundation: sand. In apartments and eyeglasses, in computer chips and cleaning equipment. The hunt for sand has reshaped coastlines, spawned black markets, and launched beach “heists.” And, some of them, possibly, could have been avoided, if the Romans had bothered to write down their own lost recipe for concrete.

Guest:

Vince Beiser,  journalist and author of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization

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Also mentioned this episode:
Are We Going the Way of the Roman Empire?

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 epidemiologist

Ian Mudway, toxicologist at Imperial College London

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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 America

Jola Ajibade, environmental sciences professor at Emory University

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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 Institute

Michael Travisano, evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota

Sara Seager, astrophysicist at MIT

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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 Magazine

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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 Centre

Chris Looney, Washington State Department of Agriculture entomologist (and murder hornet MacGyver)

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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod

Also check out:
How Do You Kill a Mosquito?

“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 Scientists

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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod

Listen to related episodes:
More Nukes!
How to Start a Nuclear War
We Design the AI To Kill Us All
Did AI Just Escape?
Is the World Ending ... Or Are We Just Online?

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 Media

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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod

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 Metavisionaries

Elizabeth Butler at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center

For 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

From mild runny noses to savage pandemics, viruses and other pathogens have tormented humans for all of history. We are locked in a perpetual race against tiny shapeshifting enemies that mutate, spread, and occasionally butcher us. Can we ever win?

Ben Bradford looks at the history and future of the race against our worst afflictions, from the dubious ethics of the first smallpox vaccine centuries ago, the strange and unbelievably gross story of the miraculous tuberculosis vaccine, and the current quest for a new breed of “universal” vaccines. It all points to a new puzzle inside our immune systems that, if solved, could allow an entirely different type of protection.

Guests:

Carl Zimmer, science writer and author of A Planet of Viruses

Juliet Morrison, microbiologist at UC Riverside

Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod