Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb. Today's episode is an interview with podcaster
Speaker 2: Ben Bradford about his new NPR Network show Are We Doomed.
Speaker 2: When this interview opportunity came up, I have to admit
Speaker 2: that my initial response was I don't know if I
Speaker 2: really want to do that right now. I wasn't sure
Speaker 2: if it was going to be good for my state
Speaker 2: of mind, because, you know, listeners, you know me to
Speaker 2: some extent, I've always been drawn to topics that circle
Speaker 2: around the doomy. I love apocalyptic media of all sorts.
Speaker 2: I listened to doomy music. But I also, especially over
Speaker 2: the past decade or so, have certainly found myself prone
Speaker 2: to spiral over some of the more pressing existential threats
Speaker 2: facing humanity today. And I just wasn't sure I wanted
Speaker 2: to lean in to cover it all right now on
Speaker 2: the podcast. However, I want to stress the listeners that
Speaker 2: Are We Doomed is not merely a teeth gnashing self
Speaker 2: injection of darkness and anxiety, and that's why I'm excited
Speaker 2: to chat with Ben Bradford here today about it is.
Speaker 2: It is a podcast that takes a very even keel
Speaker 2: journalistic approach to these topics, and I found myself at
Speaker 2: the end of the episodes feeling in ways more hopeful,
Speaker 2: but certainly more grounded. So let's go ahead and jump
Speaker 2: right into it. This was a really fun chat and
Speaker 2: I'm excited to share it with you. Hi, Ben, thanks
Speaker 2: for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Great to be here.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned on Are We Doomed, many, if not
Speaker 2: most of us have grown up in the shadows of
Speaker 2: certain looming apocalyptic possibilities, certainly the specter of nuclear war
Speaker 2: for many listeners, climate change, and these fears just permeate
Speaker 2: our media, our novels, our music, our video games, our
Speaker 2: TV shows. What have been some touchedone examples of apocalyptic
Speaker 2: media in your own life?
Speaker 3: You know, when you say it, I immediately think Mad Max.
Speaker 3: I think Sandy Wasteland. I think about the disastrous attempt
Speaker 3: to do that on Water Water World. I think about
Speaker 3: you know that the show Fallout the Road. I think
Speaker 3: as a more grounded, gritty version of that in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, right, but those are our tropes. Is
Speaker 3: the the sand, the desert, the people, are out there
Speaker 3: for out there to get you, and so yeah, like
Speaker 3: they all kind of bleed from that Mad Max thing.
Speaker 2: I feel like, what do you think it says about
Speaker 2: some of our worst fears about reality and some of
Speaker 2: our favorite distractions, that they're both sort of couched in
Speaker 2: apocalyptic vision. You know, that we might flee from a
Speaker 2: news report about nuclear proliferation into the arms of say
Speaker 2: a Fallout video game or the latest Hunger game series.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because on one hand, I
Speaker 3: think we do spend all this time not thinking about
Speaker 3: in particular nuclear war, and some of these other ones
Speaker 3: I think are are maybe lesser known, lesser reflected on
Speaker 3: as well. And then it's like we love post apocalypse
Speaker 3: and apocalyptic media. I just saw The Odyssey and you
Speaker 3: know there's trailers. Two of the trailers are like post
Speaker 3: apocalypse movies and those same tropes. You know, really, Scott's
Speaker 3: got a new one coming out and it's so amazing.
Speaker 3: But I think that part of it is that, like
Speaker 3: the post apocalypse movie, post apocalypse media is a power fantasy,
Speaker 3: and it is like fantasy is the key word, right,
Speaker 3: because you also are creating this world that it has
Speaker 3: recognizable touchstones to us. You know, it's the plan of
Speaker 3: the Apes thing where at the very end you see
Speaker 3: the statue of Liberty buried in sand. There's an emotional
Speaker 3: resonance to that. And I think that when you create
Speaker 3: a post apocalypse, you get to wipe the slate clean,
Speaker 3: imagine society doing whatever, terrible but exciting things. You know,
Speaker 3: the rules are off, but it's still us. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not Game of Thrones, where it's an interesting, political,
Speaker 3: complicated world, but we don't have dragons, we don't have
Speaker 3: those those medieval things. And so there's a way in
Speaker 3: that post apocalypse film of connecting us to where we
Speaker 3: can really kind of envision ourselves in those shoes, or
Speaker 3: we think about who would we be in it? I
Speaker 3: think that might be why, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean clearly it's it's one of those
Speaker 2: questions we can really go down the rabbit hole thinking about.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when down the rabbit hole, what do you think?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, sure. I mean one one thing that
Speaker 2: I keep thinking about in all of this because I
Speaker 2: reckon iognize. So on one hand, I absolutely have this feeling,
Speaker 2: you know where it's like I'll be reading Reuters or something.
Speaker 2: I'll be kind of like scrolling and doom scrolling on routers,
Speaker 2: and then I'll need an escape from that, and whatever
Speaker 2: I end up running into also has these touches of
Speaker 2: apocalypse to it, you know, and I'll maybe reflect on that.
Speaker 2: I've sometimes come back to this particular line from jam
Speaker 2: Cootsies Waiting for the Barbarians about the mind of empire.
Speaker 2: And on one hand, like, you know, empire is just
Speaker 2: always doing everything it cannot to die and pursuing its enemies,
Speaker 2: and then quote by night, it feeds on images of disaster,
Speaker 2: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones,
Speaker 2: acres of desolation. And when I think about that, it
Speaker 2: makes me wonder, like, Okay, are we the night in
Speaker 2: that scenario? You know, each of us, as we engage
Speaker 2: in this type of media, is our media obsession with
Speaker 2: apocalypse kind of a symptom of our role in empire.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I've never heard that before. Maybe overthinking a bit, No,
Speaker 3: I think that's that's fascinating, And so that carries back too.
Speaker 3: Then you one would think to other other ages and
Speaker 3: other empires. And you know, a thing that's interesting is
Speaker 3: speaking of using the word empire is we have another
Speaker 3: episode that we look at, you know, what does it
Speaker 3: take for a civilization to collapse? Does it take for
Speaker 3: a society to collapse? And that episode is pisfly titled
Speaker 3: are we going the Way at the Roman Empire? Specifically
Speaker 3: because my father is always grumbling that. But one of
Speaker 3: the things that we heard from an expert who studies
Speaker 3: not just Rome but other civilizations that have collapsed, was that,
Speaker 3: you know that there was sort of this mixed thing
Speaker 3: happening right where Rome. They would say Roma eterna right,
Speaker 3: eternal Rome. They thought they'd done it, They thought they'd
Speaker 3: cracked society. They thought they were post history, and of
Speaker 3: course they're not. And that that quote reminds me of that.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, yeah, I think very much a meditation
Speaker 2: on that. We'll come back to I guess empire here
Speaker 2: in a minute, But I wanted to ask you specifically
Speaker 2: about the first episode in your show, How to Start
Speaker 2: a Nuclear War? And on one level, obviously that's a doozy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it ties right into some of my own worst fears,
Speaker 2: and yet listening to the episode in full, I left
Speaker 2: it maybe more even tempered, you know, in a way
Speaker 2: it reminded me the experience of listening to the episode
Speaker 2: was kind of like a therapy exercise where we confront
Speaker 2: fearful thoughts or worst case expectations and kind of put
Speaker 2: them on trial. And in your case, you speak with
Speaker 2: experts who walk you through it. So tell me your
Speaker 2: thoughts going into that episode, like what that episode sets
Speaker 2: out to do and what you think it ultimately accomplishes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's our first episode, and I think when
Speaker 3: there's sort of two tracks here. One is the journalism
Speaker 3: track of what are we going to cover in terms
Speaker 3: of this issue, what are we going to bring to
Speaker 3: people that's new, how do we make sure that it's
Speaker 3: a well rounded conversation that is enlightening. And then there's
Speaker 3: sort of the we're starting a new show, and what
Speaker 3: do we want in the broad spectrum of everything that
Speaker 3: we can talk about, what do we want to cover?
Speaker 3: And I decided that I wanted to cover, you know,
Speaker 3: a big one in if we're covering dooms, we're covering
Speaker 3: potential and the world scenarios and related things. Let's take
Speaker 3: the biggest and most well known and let's take a
Speaker 3: piece of that, and what piece we want to take
Speaker 3: and also how do we want to cover it? And
Speaker 3: one of the things that we want to make sure
Speaker 3: that we do is do the doom without the gloom?
Speaker 3: So how do we approach this with curiosity? How do
Speaker 3: we have fun? How do we marry the journalism with that?
Speaker 3: And so ultimately I think that I wanted to get
Speaker 3: expert views of one is what I know about nuclear
Speaker 3: war or and what I've kind of grown up with
Speaker 3: and the system of that is that right? What is
Speaker 3: the paradigm today, how has it changed over years? Is
Speaker 3: it really how likely?
Speaker 2: Is it right?
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the things that we want to
Speaker 3: do in the show is kind of gauge where our
Speaker 3: threats stand, but also what can we do? And there
Speaker 3: is something very fun and interesting about asking experts solve it?
Speaker 3: Just if you could solve nuclear war, this thorny, complicated,
Speaker 3: in some ways seemingly unsolvable thing, how would you do it?
Speaker 3: And the thing that I found you mentioned is sort
Speaker 3: of a therapy exercise. And it's funny because I didn't
Speaker 3: look at it that way, but I have very much
Speaker 3: had that experience working on this show, where it kind
Speaker 3: of feels like, you know, when you start writing a
Speaker 3: story for anyone who's had this experience in any medium.
Speaker 3: You start writing a story and the page is blank,
Speaker 3: and it is a full panic. When the page is blank,
Speaker 3: you don't know what's going to be on there, and
Speaker 3: it feels impossible. And then you start digging into it
Speaker 3: and you start typing in some sentences and it just
Speaker 3: sort of becomes less daunting. And I think that the
Speaker 3: same thing is true of almost any challenge. Right You're
Speaker 3: trying to fix your car and it's broken. You don't
Speaker 3: even know where to start, and then you kind of
Speaker 3: identify the area and you identify, Okay, what do I
Speaker 3: need to do, and one step at a time you
Speaker 3: can kind of see the pathway to fixing it. Nuclear
Speaker 3: war is not a broken car, but I think that
Speaker 3: there is something about that that is also true, where
Speaker 3: when you start asking people who do think about this deeply, well,
Speaker 3: what is a pathway by which we could not have
Speaker 3: all these weapons pointed at each other or we can
Speaker 3: ensure that we do not fire them, you start to
Speaker 3: hear solutions that maybe don't take it off the table.
Speaker 3: It is a big, crazy, scary thing, but that do
Speaker 3: make it feel like there are solutions that are more
Speaker 3: achievable that can make the fingers go away from the
Speaker 3: buttons and rob. The other part of this is that
Speaker 3: it's not so much in that episode, but we have
Speaker 3: an episode a couple down the line that are about
Speaker 3: past dooms that didn't come true. We look back at
Speaker 3: the times people thought they were doomed in the past,
Speaker 3: and what you see when you do that is basically
Speaker 3: that this feeling that we have, I think is really omnipresent,
Speaker 3: not just in our current era, but also for nuclear
Speaker 3: war in particular. There have been predictions of a nuclear
Speaker 3: war since two nations first got the bombs, and the
Speaker 3: fact that it hasn't happened. I don't think should make
Speaker 3: us say, oh, well it can't happen, or oh well
Speaker 3: they were wrong. But what it does is it does
Speaker 3: show that with work and you can look at why
Speaker 3: they were wrong, why these predictions didn't come true. And
Speaker 3: it's actually a very optimistic story of work and diplomacy
Speaker 3: and thoughtful effort that I find really inspiring. So I
Speaker 3: think that, like both in that first episode and kind
Speaker 3: of throughout the series, I try to hold on to
Speaker 3: that because otherwise I will need therapy for the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that like again this is this is something
Speaker 2: I love about what you've put together here, is that
Speaker 2: you mentioned like the the terror of the white page,
Speaker 2: and I think that does line up with the way
Speaker 2: we sort of abstractly think about some of these threats,
Speaker 2: because we'll, you know, we'll think about nuclear war, for example,
Speaker 2: in its worst possible, most cinematic scenarios, and and then
Speaker 2: you know, we don't want to then do homework on that,
Speaker 2: and we don't want to necessarily even seek out any
Speaker 2: any journalism on that. You know, we just want to
Speaker 2: get away from it and run into a distraction. And
Speaker 2: you know, what you do in the show is like
Speaker 2: we'll break it down, like, well, okay, what are the ways,
Speaker 2: you know, how how can a nuclear war happen? What
Speaker 2: are the ways that that it could occur? And some
Speaker 2: of those are still really terrifying. Again, just the idea
Speaker 2: that you get into that, you know, one person can
Speaker 2: just side that it's it's nuclear wartime, and then it
Speaker 2: is that is that is terrifying and it feels entirely broken. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but then yeah, you touch on all these efforts that
Speaker 2: have taken place and are continuing to take place to
Speaker 2: also reduce that risk and prevent it from happening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I think that pretty early on my take,
Speaker 2: and I is, the nuclear war is pretty embarrassing. You know,
Speaker 2: we're going to be looking throughout this series all these
Speaker 2: different ways that all these different threats. Some of them
Speaker 2: are real, some of them are hype. Some of them
Speaker 2: there are a couple that I had not heard of before,
Speaker 2: and now.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I do love that. But for nuclear war,
Speaker 3: it really is one that we built, and we have
Speaker 3: created this system. It is a system for your own protection,
Speaker 3: and that system is worldwide destruction. And you got to
Speaker 3: be like, really, good job, humanity. I mean, there's something
Speaker 3: very human about creating that system, and I think through
Speaker 3: that lens it also takes some of the majesty away
Speaker 3: from it, and it also allows you to hear some
Speaker 3: kind of fun I find in a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 3: There is there are fun and ridiculous stories.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We're doing one about food and the food supply, and
Speaker 3: which is I think you know both it's both fragile
Speaker 3: and resilient.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The slightest thing that you might not think of can
Speaker 3: can spike food prices and can cause problems in various
Speaker 3: parts of the world. On the other hand, we're feeding
Speaker 3: far more people than the world has ever fed before
Speaker 3: and and and generally doing that quite successfully with some caveats.
Speaker 3: I was talking to an expert about this and he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, the thing that I find ridiculous is that
Speaker 3: we grow all of this corn, and most of it
Speaker 3: we just grow it and then we burn it. Like
Speaker 3: we grow the corn and then we turn into ethanol,
Speaker 3: and then we burn the ethanol. And that's what we're
Speaker 3: doing with this corn. And it's like, oh yeah, And
Speaker 3: when you think about it that way, it's not to
Speaker 3: say there aren't reasons for doing that, not to say
Speaker 3: that that's not you know, we'll investigate that and explore it.
Speaker 3: But you're like, yeah, it's a it's a weird thing.
Speaker 3: Humanity is weird. We do weird stuff, and when you're
Speaker 3: looking at these kind of global scales, it gets pretty weird.
Speaker 3: A nuclear war is on there where nobody has an
Speaker 3: incentive to start a nuclear war with a couple of
Speaker 3: caveats that we get into, and yet it seems like
Speaker 3: or you know, there's a reason that it's on the list.
Speaker 2: I love one example of that, you that you're a
Speaker 2: guest in that episode brought up, and not just because
Speaker 2: it would be a great gimmick for a John Carpenter movie,
Speaker 2: but the idea that the nuclear football that a US
Speaker 2: president turns to in the event of a possible nuclear
Speaker 2: exchange should be surgically implanted in a person's chest, so
Speaker 2: you'd have to kill somebody to get it out of it,
Speaker 2: you know, to really drive home the stakes of the decision.
Speaker 2: I don't even have a question about that, but I
Speaker 2: just wanted to bring that up.
Speaker 3: No, I appreciate you mentioning it to me. That was
Speaker 3: actually a real moment. So we have this expert, Sharon Winer,
Speaker 3: who is at American University. But the reason I sought
Speaker 3: her out was because she's also done work for the Pentagon,
Speaker 3: She's done work for the Armed Services Committee in Congress,
Speaker 3: and you know, really has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of
Speaker 3: the issue. And so I was like, Okay, I want
Speaker 3: somebody who's well rounded. I mean, again, when we talk
Speaker 3: about how are we going to approach this thing? And
Speaker 3: then I didn't know her particular take on what we
Speaker 3: should do, and you can hear in the episode me
Speaker 3: being kind of surprised where she lands on what she
Speaker 3: would like to see happen. But one of the things
Speaker 3: that she studies that is really interesting is decision making
Speaker 3: and the decision making process that could put us more
Speaker 3: at risk. And I thought this was really interesting because
Speaker 3: again we talked about the things that you know, could
Speaker 3: make nuclear war less likely and also the things that
Speaker 3: are ridiculous. It's like, her contention is that we have
Speaker 3: built this very very short window a huge amount of pressure,
Speaker 3: put it all on one person in the United States
Speaker 3: in this case, the president, to decide whether to launch
Speaker 3: these weapons, whether to start a war, and that everything
Speaker 3: that we know about the way we've created this is
Speaker 3: like this is a bad meeting. Like you have created
Speaker 3: a bad meeting that leads to bad decision making because
Speaker 3: people don't react well under pressure. And so a lot
Speaker 3: of what we're talking about in that moment is sort
Speaker 3: of the decision making process and how do you make
Speaker 3: sure that if somebody is deciding whether or not to launch,
Speaker 3: that they're doing it as informed as possible, with the
Speaker 3: understanding of the consequences as possible. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that she said, and I was like, wait, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: what is She's like, you know, you just put the
Speaker 3: launch codes in someone's chest cavity, and they've got to
Speaker 3: kill that person to get them out. And yeah, and
Speaker 3: for her, her point was that if you're going to
Speaker 3: fire those nuclear weapons, you're gonna kill a whole lot
Speaker 3: of people. And it's the you know, it's the statistics phrase, right,
Speaker 3: that one person's death is a tragedy, a million deaths
Speaker 3: is a statistic, And that's absolutely right. You know, these
Speaker 3: are gonna be faceless people. These are people that you're
Speaker 3: not seeing, You're not going to see the direct consequences.
Speaker 3: But how many people would actually pull that knife on
Speaker 3: that one person to you know, do the bloody work
Speaker 3: of getting that launch code, getting those launch codes out?
Speaker 3: So it's not a real proposal. I don't think she's
Speaker 3: like thinking that someone has to undergo the surgery, but
Speaker 3: I do think it drives home what we're talking about here,
Speaker 3: and I thought it was a fascinating example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so Yeah, again, I highly recommend, yeah, starting
Speaker 2: with that first episode for anyone out there who wants
Speaker 2: to give the show a go. Now, you know earlier
Speaker 2: that they're there are these threats that we've grown up
Speaker 2: with our entire lives. You know, for many of us
Speaker 2: we've grown up in the in the shadow of the
Speaker 2: mushroom mushroom clouds, as Queen put it, or you know,
Speaker 2: we've we've grown up knowing about the dangers of global
Speaker 2: warming and climate change, uh others. You know, on one level, AI,
Speaker 2: you know, certainly we've grown up watching Terminator, we've grown
Speaker 2: up engaged in with sci fi. But this is also
Speaker 2: one that certainly we've seen the changes happen so rapidly,
Speaker 2: and they're still happening so rapidly. Was this was this
Speaker 2: a tougher one to navigate? What was your approach to
Speaker 2: handling AI on the show? So here's what I thought.
Speaker 3: I thought, Okay, the first episode is about nuclear war
Speaker 3: grounded practical, you know, this is this is one we
Speaker 3: got to worry about. And now this show it's like
Speaker 3: a mixtape, you know. So we have episodes that are
Speaker 3: about the big stuff, and we have episode about stuff
Speaker 3: that's hype, and we have you know, our recent We
Speaker 3: have an episode that's about how we are losing the
Speaker 3: moon because the moon is drifting away, which is true
Speaker 3: but not really a big deal for any of us
Speaker 3: unless you're plan to live for about five hundred million years.
Speaker 3: And so I wanted to be a mixtape, and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: the second episode, let's look at AI. AI is now
Speaker 3: on the list at a lot of very credible places
Speaker 3: that track what's called existential risk or global catastrophic risk.
Speaker 3: These are the academic terms for doom stuff. And so
Speaker 3: you want to ask why. And so I was like, well,
Speaker 3: let's design the AI that goes rogue and kills us
Speaker 3: all this big galaxy brained thing. What would that take?
Speaker 3: And the problem is that when I did that episode,
Speaker 3: it's like a magic trick. I just it's like, you
Speaker 3: take the ingredients that you need for this thing to happen,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, for me at least, it
Speaker 3: feels so much less science fiction. So I had initially thought,
Speaker 3: and I do like to let this show be guided
Speaker 3: in some to some degree by my curiosity.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The episode after that is about super volcanoes and super volcanos.
Speaker 3: Was like, Oh, I've heard about super volcanos. I wonder
Speaker 3: what their deal is For the AI one. I started
Speaker 3: off thinking, Oh, this will be a lark, this will
Speaker 3: be fun, this will be a nice, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of more ridiculous, more sci fi ish second episode, and
Speaker 3: instead I left being like, oh boy, and we have
Speaker 3: a couple of AI episodes I don't want to get
Speaker 3: you know, I'm trying to again parcel these things out.
Speaker 3: I think we're so inundated with AI, and I think
Speaker 3: our episodes are fun and different kind of bites on them.
Speaker 3: But that was very much my feeling of it. It
Speaker 3: I don't love it. I don't love the existential possibilities
Speaker 3: of it. It doesn't mean that they will happen. It
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that they couldn't be snake oil, it doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that it couldn't all work out really really well.
Speaker 3: But I think that what I found in that episode,
Speaker 3: and I can drill down more specifically if you would like,
Speaker 3: But I just that's how I desired to approach it,
Speaker 3: and I did not land where I expected to land.
Speaker 2: So I'm always interested in how journalists podcasters pick their sources,
Speaker 2: pick their their interview subjects for topics like this, What
Speaker 2: can you tell us about your selection process for this
Speaker 2: particular episode.
Speaker 3: So I was trying to figure out if we're trying
Speaker 3: to build the AI that goes rogue and kills us all,
Speaker 3: but who are the people who can speak to that thing?
Speaker 3: Who can kind of give the argument. And I think
Speaker 3: there's sort of two sides of this. One are there
Speaker 3: is sort of a block of AI folks who are
Speaker 3: saying this is really scary, not just for what it
Speaker 3: could do to jobs or knowledge or culture or just
Speaker 3: you know, grappling with rapid change as society has in
Speaker 3: the past with our technologies, but there's an actual existential risk.
Speaker 3: And I think that for this episode, my goal was
Speaker 3: to talk to those people, although finding different people in
Speaker 3: the broad range of it. So we have two guests
Speaker 3: in that episode. We have one who is a researcher
Speaker 3: who's very scared about this. But one of the reasons
Speaker 3: I liked her was because she does surveys. In part.
Speaker 3: Part of her job is doing surveys of the industry
Speaker 3: itself and the people who are there, so she can
Speaker 3: say not only hey, these are the pathways, these are
Speaker 3: the thoughts. Like basically, if we're saying what ingredients do
Speaker 3: you need for AI to go do bad stuff on
Speaker 3: its own, and we're not talking about I should just say,
Speaker 3: by the way, we're not talking about sentience here. We're
Speaker 3: not talking about like the AI is smart. You're talking
Speaker 3: kind of like what you saw in the Hugging Face incident,
Speaker 3: which is this thing that just recently happened where a
Speaker 3: chat GPT model was being built to hack something, but
Speaker 3: they were testing it in a sandbox close closed, closed
Speaker 3: internet and as we're recording this, this happened a few
Speaker 3: days ago, and the AI figured out how to get
Speaker 3: out of the sandbox, how to basically go from being
Speaker 3: not connected to the Internet to getting an Internet connection,
Speaker 3: hacking into another AI repository to get the answers to
Speaker 3: what it was supposed to do, and then kind of
Speaker 3: sneaking its way back in kind of like you know
Speaker 3: the squid at the aquarium who figures out how to
Speaker 3: unlock its cage and then goes out and eats a
Speaker 3: fish and then scurries back in and relocks the cage.
Speaker 3: We just saw that happen. And essentially, the the the
Speaker 3: scary versions of this are the more existential versions of
Speaker 3: that thing where you give it a goal and it
Speaker 3: kind of stupidly is like, well, I'm going to pursue
Speaker 3: the goal by any means necessary, because that's what you've
Speaker 3: told me to do. And the more capable it gets,
Speaker 3: more weird stuff it can do in terms of hacking
Speaker 3: or whatever. And we have some reasons that we look
Speaker 3: at that these people tell us about about why they
Speaker 3: fear that that's sort of the default case. I would
Speaker 3: say I do much better job of explaining that in
Speaker 3: the episode, but the people we wanted to talk to.
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk to people who could explain that
Speaker 3: because to me reading about it, it does feel like
Speaker 3: a magic trick to say, Okay, this seems insane and
Speaker 3: then to kind of walk through it and be like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: that actually seems less insane. I like the idea of
Speaker 3: having somebody who could give us the view within the industry.
Speaker 3: We also have somebody who's sort of more on the
Speaker 3: solution side, who we also have in a later episode
Speaker 3: that talks about more like human misuse. He's more worried,
Speaker 3: I think, near term about how humans misuse it than
Speaker 3: you know, you give somebody a really capable assistant who
Speaker 3: can help them make bioweapons, and like, that's not great either.
Speaker 3: But so I want people on that spectrum. I want
Speaker 3: to basically acknowledge in the episode and talk through some
Speaker 3: of the reasons and ask these people, what are some
Speaker 3: of the reasons that you could be wrong? But that
Speaker 3: was the guests that I chose for that particular episode,
Speaker 3: and we will have other episodes. I am sure that
Speaker 3: grab other guests to talk through it. The AI thing,
Speaker 3: for me, the way that I look at it is,
Speaker 3: you do have all of these organizations. Whether we're talking
Speaker 3: about the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that was you know,
Speaker 3: Oppenheimer and Einstein were part of the founders to kind
Speaker 3: of they run the doomsday clock. We're talking about Cambridge University,
Speaker 3: they have the Center for the Study of Existential Risk.
Speaker 3: We're talking about defense departments, we're talking about the Rand Corporation.
Speaker 3: Why do they have AI on their list of existential threats?
Speaker 3: That's sort of like the thing that I started with.
Speaker 3: And when we say why, what we really mean is
Speaker 3: how because nuclear war we understand the how pretty easily
Speaker 3: it goes boom. AI doesn't go boom, So what is that?
Speaker 3: So that's where I started, and then the question was, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: who can kind of speak to that. That's very long
Speaker 3: answer for how I got those guests, but that's kind
Speaker 3: of how I approached it.
Speaker 2: I think I early we alluded to the idea of
Speaker 2: there being like a or at least I was thinking
Speaker 2: of it this way. A ranking system in our own minds,
Speaker 2: like we have certain existential threats that are sort of
Speaker 2: up there at the top, and then there are others
Speaker 2: that we've pushed down to the bottom. And I was wondering,
Speaker 2: at this point in the run of the show, has
Speaker 2: your own personal internal rankings it has adjusted. Have you
Speaker 2: found like certain big ones kind of like dropping down
Speaker 2: the scale and maybe some more obscure ones. I think
Speaker 2: you did allude to this sort of climbing up the
Speaker 2: scale a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that I've had the big ones
Speaker 3: drop on the scale beyond to the extent that we've discussed,
Speaker 3: where just I'm more optimistic about humanity's ability to solve
Speaker 3: these seemingly unsolvable problems, and that has been a really
Speaker 3: nice side effect of doing this show that I didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily expect. But I certainly have had some other ones
Speaker 3: that I had not considered also climb the rankings. One
Speaker 3: that I didn't know about. There are something like I
Speaker 3: didn't know so the Yellowstone super Volcano is a good
Speaker 3: example where you may have encountered this in the past.
Speaker 3: But essentially, if you are on certain corners of the Internet,
Speaker 3: not even like deeply weird corners of the internet. Just
Speaker 3: you know, just I think this can kind of drift
Speaker 3: drift past you. This factoid, and it is a true factoid,
Speaker 3: which is that there is a massive volcano underneath Yellowstone
Speaker 3: National Park. It extends beyond the boundaries of the park.
Speaker 3: That is true. It has erupted in a cycle of
Speaker 3: six hundred thousand years. It spread ash all over the
Speaker 3: continent in a way that would be catastrophic to the
Speaker 3: nation and probably too much of the globe if it
Speaker 3: were to happen again. And the last time was guess what,
Speaker 3: six hundred thousand years ago. So we started there. On
Speaker 3: that episode, I was like, huh, is this the thing
Speaker 3: that we actually have to worry about? And very quickly
Speaker 3: the answer is no. And very quickly the challenge on
Speaker 3: that episode was, well, how do you how do I
Speaker 3: not be one of these like breathless cable TV documentaries
Speaker 3: that's like Yellowstone is going to explode? And what we
Speaker 3: do is sort of investigate that actually, and I love
Speaker 3: that episode. That's our third episode, and and and that
Speaker 3: one very much. Within two minutes you have the not
Speaker 3: we tell you, I think in the episode description, and
Speaker 3: it's like we're fine. And the reasons we're fine are
Speaker 3: really interesting, and the reasons that people think we're not
Speaker 3: fine are also really interesting. So super volcanos is one
Speaker 3: that I think was like in the back of my mind, like, huh,
Speaker 3: I wonder if I have to worry about that, And
Speaker 3: we're fine. But the big ones are the big ones
Speaker 3: for a reason. And I think that the part of
Speaker 3: it that is maybe less scary is just seeing ways
Speaker 3: that we can get ourselves out of messages that we've
Speaker 3: made that we have done so in the past.
Speaker 2: When considering the various doom scenarios. Yeah, do you feel
Speaker 2: like modern civilization's global interconnectedness makes us more resilient to
Speaker 2: localize shocks or does it open us up to more
Speaker 2: cascading effects?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes to both, because on one hand, you know,
Speaker 3: someone described it to me one an expert who covers
Speaker 3: both looking at history and civilizational collapse and looking at
Speaker 3: sort of current threats. He described it as like a
Speaker 3: coral reef, where a coral reef gets damaged in a
Speaker 3: specific part and the rest of the reef will bring
Speaker 3: nutrients over to it and repair that part of the
Speaker 3: coral reef, and that's the beauty of interconnectedness. You know,
Speaker 3: we see that with a hurricane Katrina, or we see
Speaker 3: that with other disasters. The I'm in Los Angeles, you know,
Speaker 3: the wild the wildfires, and you know Los Angeles is rebuilding,
Speaker 3: and that happens throughout history, of course. But the larger
Speaker 3: the support network, the more people willing to send aid
Speaker 3: or send fire trucks or any of those things, that
Speaker 3: the easier it is for a society to survive. And
Speaker 3: so that's the beauty of interconnectedness. And I think that
Speaker 3: that's true on a really global scale. You know, we're
Speaker 3: talking about about hunger and the amount of food that
Speaker 3: can be delivered. I mean, at this point, hunger is
Speaker 3: a political challenge more than it is a technology challenge.
Speaker 3: We have the food to feed everybody in the world,
Speaker 3: and there is a lot of effort to and has
Speaker 3: been in the past, more so than than this particular moment,
Speaker 3: but to to get food too different places around the world,
Speaker 3: and that's an amazing thing. I think we don't necessarily
Speaker 3: always recognize those accomplishments, and so that interconnectedness is really helpful.
Speaker 3: The problem is if a coral reef gets too damaged
Speaker 3: in one part, it can overwhelm the entire system, and
Speaker 3: the entire system can collapse, And I think that that
Speaker 3: is the other fear, and I'm actually really interested in
Speaker 3: that idea. So we have another episode that's like, can
Speaker 3: we kill the Internet? Basically? Is there a way that
Speaker 3: the Internet that we all rely on for kinds of
Speaker 3: things like not just the things that we all know
Speaker 3: we rely on it for, which I think are pretty
Speaker 3: broad in and of themselves, but you know, water treatment
Speaker 3: plants are often network connected and vulnerable to hacking. Is
Speaker 3: there something that could bring down the Internet, not for
Speaker 3: an hour, not for a day, and not in one area,
Speaker 3: but around the globe? And we try to do it,
Speaker 3: and it's a pretty galaxy brain episode, and we have
Speaker 3: kind of we tracked you know, it's the great thing.
Speaker 3: We tracked down some experts who work in Internet security
Speaker 3: and we're like, Okay, you have all the resources in
Speaker 3: the world at your supposal break the Internet. And they
Speaker 3: come up with some real James Bond style effort to
Speaker 3: do it. And again, I think that's like an You're like, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: the Internet's pretty darn resilient, but it is a Any
Speaker 3: sort of single failure system is a potential point of fragility.
Speaker 3: So that interconnectedness, right, the fact that we all rely
Speaker 3: on the internet for for so many things means that
Speaker 3: if there were some way to bring it down, it
Speaker 3: would be a global catastrophe. So so it's both.
Speaker 2: What if you found is if you found there to
Speaker 2: be some sort of a like a fundamental difference between it,
Speaker 2: like a scientifically sound warning, say like climate modeling, asteroid tracking,
Speaker 2: or you know, just the very real threat of nuclear war,
Speaker 2: and on the other hand, like a cultural apocalypse panic,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, and then how and how are these two
Speaker 2: interconnected totally?
Speaker 3: You know, if we're talking about post apocalypse movies, I
Speaker 3: think those speak to cultural panic. There are ways to
Speaker 3: look at what we think would probably happen in an apocalypse,
Speaker 3: you know, whether that's the pathway that a nuclear war
Speaker 3: would actually take. What would it mean if the missiles flew,
Speaker 3: where would you go? Who would survive? More people survived
Speaker 3: the blasts than we commonly think, at least, you know,
Speaker 3: for our for projections that the government made even during
Speaker 3: the height of the Cold War, But what would it mean.
Speaker 3: It's a lot different from the movies. We can look
Speaker 3: to past collapses and have we have this great episode
Speaker 3: with an anthropology who studies particularly civilizations in the Americas
Speaker 3: that that that collapsed, and a lot of them with
Speaker 3: European colonization, and so what happened was very fast collapses, right,
Speaker 3: government collapsing, many many, many, many people killed. In some cases,
Speaker 3: you could have indigenous communities where ninety percent of a
Speaker 3: village were wiped out of the course of a winter.
Speaker 3: And the point being on that that you could look
Speaker 3: at that and say, okay, that is an example all
Speaker 3: across the world, I mean across the two continents, a
Speaker 3: very grim example, but of something that approximates the kind
Speaker 3: of apocalypses that presage our movies, right, the kind of
Speaker 3: thing that leads to these post apocalypse societies. There's no government,
Speaker 3: there's there's ruins. People have to figure out what to do,
Speaker 3: and you can ask then you can look for to history,
Speaker 3: and you can look to anthropology, and you can look
Speaker 3: to psychology and to say, well what do people do?
Speaker 3: And the thing that actually sort of amazing is what
Speaker 3: people do is they do not retreat to their bunkers.
Speaker 3: They do not go off on their own. In those
Speaker 3: situations in history, in different communities across two continents, people
Speaker 3: reform communities, they turn to each other instead of away
Speaker 3: from each other, which is an amazing thing. It's like
Speaker 3: not a thing I'm rooting for, but is like suggest
Speaker 3: something about the difference between kind of our cultural awareness
Speaker 3: and our cultural consideration of how these threats look versus
Speaker 3: the reality of it. And so I think when we're
Speaker 3: evaluating who the guests are, the kind of information that
Speaker 3: we're going to give, I actually think that's like a
Speaker 3: kind of a good example of the lens, right. We're
Speaker 3: always doing the thing. I mean, I'm a longtime reporter
Speaker 3: and the thing that I love about reporting is asking,
Speaker 3: you know, what does somebody else think? How do they know?
Speaker 3: What can they point me to about how they know?
Speaker 3: And there is a wealth of scientific knowledge of you know,
Speaker 3: historical knowledge that speaks to these things, and so that's
Speaker 3: always who we're trying to identify. Is like, you know,
Speaker 3: I talked a little bit earlier about our nuclear expert
Speaker 3: that we have, and you very much hear her point
Speaker 3: of view in that episode, and you hear me being
Speaker 3: surprised by it, but you also hear I think this
Speaker 3: very grounded explanation of how we think nuclear war escalates.
Speaker 3: And I will say that it is very similar to
Speaker 3: what we hear. We have an upcoming episode as we
Speaker 3: record this week, we have an episode that is about
Speaker 3: the percurrent push, the case within the US government for
Speaker 3: more nuclear weapons, and the ways in which those conversations
Speaker 3: dovetail between somebody who wants less nuclear weapons or no
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons and somebody who thinks that we need more
Speaker 3: for our safety. There's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: overlap in the process that they see. I want a
Speaker 3: little bit off track there, but the point is, you know,
Speaker 3: trying to find these experts who can answer those questions
Speaker 3: about you know, what do we know about these things?
Speaker 3: How do we pull in history, science, hard data, and
Speaker 3: making sure that we're doing that and not just playing
Speaker 3: into pop culture fears.
Speaker 2: Finally, you get into this even in the very first episode,
Speaker 2: but can you explain the idea of a reverse apocalypse
Speaker 2: and are we living in one?
Speaker 3: I think the idea of that is if you go
Speaker 3: back two decades, if you go back three decades, you
Speaker 3: go back five decades, and you say, what does the
Speaker 3: world look like. Who has access to water, what kind
Speaker 3: of diseases are killing people? Who has access to roads?
Speaker 3: What is the quality of life?
Speaker 2: Health?
Speaker 3: How many children are get to live to adulthood, and
Speaker 3: what you see is broadly around the world, those numbers
Speaker 3: go up across decades. So we have an episode that
Speaker 3: is essentially the argument that we are living in a
Speaker 3: reverse apocalypse.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 3: Even the store bought gas station sleeve of doughnuts that's
Speaker 3: so bad for you is a mini miracle, and we
Speaker 3: hear that case, and I think it's I think it's
Speaker 3: a fascinating one because a thing that I do think
Speaker 3: is that we often miss the we miss the parts
Speaker 3: of our society that we would miss if things did collapse,
Speaker 3: If that makes sense, It's easy to overlook the gains
Speaker 3: that we as a civilization have made, and there are
Speaker 3: terrible things happening all the time. And the way that
Speaker 3: the guests in that episode, the first thing he said
Speaker 3: to me, He's like, look, when this episode airs, something
Speaker 3: horrible is going to have happened, and we're going to
Speaker 3: be talking about how good things are. And it's not
Speaker 3: to discount the horrible thing that happened, because horrible things
Speaker 3: are always happening and and really broad scales, but if
Speaker 3: you sort of distill down to some of these things
Speaker 3: that people really care about, like let's say, the number
Speaker 3: of kids that make it to adulthood. You know, the
Speaker 3: stat that we hear and that checks out is that,
Speaker 3: you know, for most of human history, one out of two,
Speaker 3: one out of two, and across the world, not just
Speaker 3: in the United States, but across the world, you know,
Speaker 3: that figure is radically different. And there's huge disparities in
Speaker 3: that number still in the US and Europe or you
Speaker 3: know what have you versus some other places in the world,
Speaker 3: But every place in the world is doing better than
Speaker 3: like eighteen forty five. When I think that the life
Speaker 3: expectancy in the best, the highest life expectancy in the world,
Speaker 3: I think was I think was in England and it
Speaker 3: was like forty five years old. So you know, when
Speaker 3: you look at things along that scale, But then you
Speaker 3: also kind of go a decade by decade, you start
Speaker 3: to see the real games that we've made. And to me,
Speaker 3: that matters because I think a theme that we're seeing
Speaker 3: is that people can make choices to make life life
Speaker 3: better and they have to kind of come together to
Speaker 3: do that. And I think that one of the real
Speaker 3: problems that we have that we investigate is that particular breakdown.
Speaker 3: And maybe if we're talking about you know, what are
Speaker 3: the risks today that actually you could argue would be
Speaker 3: the greatest risk, which is also kind of cool because
Speaker 3: it means if we wake up to that fact, if
Speaker 3: we figure out that we do have agency, that you know,
Speaker 3: collectively we can choose what we want to do about
Speaker 3: these things and have in the past. That also shows
Speaker 3: a way out.
Speaker 2: It reminds me a little bit, how what is in
Speaker 2: I think twenty eleven, Stephen Pinker had the book The
Speaker 2: Better Angels of Our Nature, and I remember being, you know,
Speaker 2: won over by some of the arguments of that book
Speaker 2: about you know, about you know, that we're living in
Speaker 2: a better time than any other time in human history,
Speaker 2: for all these various advancements and so forth. And then
Speaker 2: over the past maybe ten years or so, it has
Speaker 2: felt less like that, you know, and certainly since you know,
Speaker 2: the pandemic, I think a lot of us, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of things that have been going on in
Speaker 2: the world, going on in the news cycle. And maybe
Speaker 2: part of this too is just you know, for my
Speaker 2: own you know, my own subjective place, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: just older than I was then. But you know, it
Speaker 2: has felt less like we were, at least on some level,
Speaker 2: like when you start, you know, getting into the facts
Speaker 2: and you remind yourself, well, yeah, actually, I'm I still
Speaker 2: am glad I'm not living in the dark ages. I'm
Speaker 2: still glad it's not in the early nineteenth century or something.
Speaker 3: A lot of goiters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but it has I think it is good
Speaker 2: to be reminded of these things while again at the
Speaker 2: same time, and I think this is very much in
Speaker 2: the spirit of your show, certainly not dismissing these threats
Speaker 2: and the things that are going wrong, the things that
Speaker 2: are that are terrible in the world, but also sort
Speaker 2: of looking at the sort of I guess, grander scope
Speaker 2: of where things could be headed.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I think that's I think that's so well said,
Speaker 3: and I completely agree. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things I'm interested in pursuing as we
Speaker 3: keep going is the sort of the threats behind the threats,
Speaker 3: the connections between these things that maybe don't seem like
Speaker 3: they have a lot of connections. You know, your your
Speaker 3: your pandemics, or your solar storms, or your your hysterias,
Speaker 3: your hypes, the things that you know are not a
Speaker 3: big deal, but but but take up a lot of
Speaker 3: our mind space, the things that we do well and
Speaker 3: not recognizing those and how all those things connect. And
Speaker 3: I think that is very much part of it. And yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it's it's uh, that's the thing that I'm like looking
Speaker 3: forward to digging into more awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, can you tell tell our listeners here and interviewers
Speaker 2: for those watching on Netflix where they can check out
Speaker 2: the show, and especially where they can watch the show,
Speaker 2: is very excited h to realize you have a video component. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's really jazzy. Here.
Speaker 3: It looks just like me. It's so we have The
Speaker 3: name of the show is Are We Doomed? It is
Speaker 3: a podcast available on all the pop cast platforms. We
Speaker 3: are also on YouTube. We are at Are We Doomed
Speaker 3: Pod on YouTube, and we have every show has an
Speaker 3: animated podcast version. So that's a little character that has
Speaker 3: my voice behind it, and all of our guests have
Speaker 3: a cartoon version. And yeah, it's a little merry thing
Speaker 3: we've created.
Speaker 2: Very cool and and I believe you mentioned that there's
Speaker 2: like a tear for supporters of the show where they
Speaker 2: can request certain apocalyptic episodes, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're certainly going to have mail bags many
Speaker 3: people can go onto our website, which is doompod dot com,
Speaker 3: and there's a space there to fill it in, but
Speaker 3: we were giving our our supporters sort of first crack
Speaker 3: at when we do these mail bag episodes. We haven't
Speaker 3: done one yet, but we're going to have one coming
Speaker 3: up fairly soon. Here.
Speaker 2: All right, Well again, the show is Are We Doomed?
Speaker 2: I'm really enjoying it. I'm going to keep listening to it,
Speaker 2: and I recommend that to our listeners check it out
Speaker 2: as well. Thanks again for taking time out of your
Speaker 2: day to come on the show and chat with me.
Speaker 3: I'm grateful for you having me.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks once more to Ben Bradford for coming
Speaker 2: on the show and talking about the NPR Network show
Speaker 2: Are We Doomed? Again? I highly recommend this one to you.
Speaker 2: I did this interview because I was one over by
Speaker 2: this show and think that a lot of you are
Speaker 2: going to benefit from listening to it as I have,
Speaker 2: So go ahead and check that out wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. And again, he also has a really fun
Speaker 2: video version of the show on YouTube. Thanks once more
Speaker 2: to the excellent JJ Possway for his work on this episode,
Speaker 2: and as always, if you want to reach out to
Speaker 2: us with suggestions for future episodes, questions, comments, and so forth.
Speaker 2: You can do so by emailing us at contact at
Speaker 2: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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