In this week's show we turn back to our central theme of the end of the world and dive into Bryan Walsh's book End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World (Hachette Books 2019). After a brief recap of recent public surveys about the end of the world (...spoiler alert, a little over 50% of the world thinks our way of life has a 50% chance or better of coming to an end in our lifetime, while a quarter think humanity has a 50% of going extinct this century!), we turn to one the oldest threats to life on Earth--asteroids. We'll look at the existential risks posed by Near Earth Objects colliding into our planet, and consider the legacy of earlier asteroid strikes, such as the one 65 million years ago that crashed into Chicxulub, Mexico and brought an end to the reign of the dinosaurs or the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia. And we'll also look at more recent developments in the search of potential dangers in the sky, and consider how new efforts such as President Trump's Space Force fit into this picture. All this and more in this week's episode on Asteroids, Existential Risk, and Planetary Defense.

I'm producing these episodes in parallel with a course of the same name which I am teaching at California State University, Chico where I am currently teaching.  Each week I will look at a different topic related to the end of the world, from doomsday preppers and our deepest fears to the role of religion, media, and politics in thinking about the end of the world.

There are several short video segments included which you can watch by following the links below:

Clip 1: The Universe is Trying to Kill You

Clip 2: The Legacy of Shoemaker-Levy 9

Clip 4: The Asteroid Hunters

Clip 4: NASA's plan to save Earth from a giant asteroid

For additional show notes and materials references in this episode be sure to visit my End of the World page:

https://www.chriscrews.com/end-of-the-world-podcast/

Thanks for listening.

Dr. Crews