Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realist, our classic tonight,
Speaker 1: and actually we're having several this weekend in celebration of
Speaker 1: the end of the year. We thought, what better time
Speaker 1: to what better time to re examine our conversation with
Speaker 1: one of our very good friends mentor of sorts. Although
Speaker 1: he hates when we say that, Josh Clark.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of pressure, no no, but it's accurate.
Speaker 2: Josh is a cool guy and a super sharp cookie.
Speaker 2: Can you be a sharp cookie?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Crazon whatever. He's smart, okay, and he is super interested
Speaker 2: in a lot of the same topics that we are,
Speaker 2: not the least of which is the idea of this world,
Speaker 2: this little pale blue dot that we occupy, coming to
Speaker 2: an end, whether with a bang or with the whimper.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of different ways that that could
Speaker 2: potentially happen. And that's what Josh covers on his podcast
Speaker 2: at the End of the World.
Speaker 4: All the little ways that this whole thing that we
Speaker 4: call reality and experience could just go boom. That was it,
Speaker 4: great job, but you don't even you don't even get
Speaker 4: that it's just over.
Speaker 2: But it's also not a massive bummer. The show is
Speaker 2: handled with a thoughtful commentary, some interviews with some experts
Speaker 2: in the field, and Josh's of course kind of you know,
Speaker 2: trademark wit and lightheartedness, like it's it's heavy, but you'll
Speaker 2: get through it, and it's you'll feel learned something and
Speaker 2: you might you know, get some laughs and feel some
Speaker 2: feels along the way.
Speaker 1: So check out our conversation with our with our Ride
Speaker 1: or Die Josh c himself, and then tune into the
Speaker 1: show End of the World with Josh Clark, available now
Speaker 1: in its entirety.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and listen to how many things have come
Speaker 3: to have or at least we're on the precipice of now.
Speaker 3: Right since we made this in twelve twenty one, twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen is when this came out. So many of the
Speaker 3: things we discussed in this show feel like they've kind
Speaker 3: of happened. The pandemic happened right after this. This is
Speaker 3: December twenty twenty eighteen, and we're talking about gain of
Speaker 3: function research in specific labs that are doing dangerous stuff.
Speaker 4: I don't know, guys.
Speaker 2: Let's see what Josh has to say about all this.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is MaTx.
Speaker 2: My name is Noa.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben. We are joined with our super producer,
Speaker 1: Paul Mission Control Decatt. Most importantly, you are you. You
Speaker 1: are here that makes this stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. Gentlemen, we are at the end of the year,
Speaker 1: and today we are talking about the end of the world.
Speaker 4: Yes, how humanity shall perhaps perish.
Speaker 6: Yes, we you know, do a better job and fix things.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure we're gonna be able to fix it now.
Speaker 1: We are not confronting these existential threats alone. Today we
Speaker 1: are joined with an expert and a friend of the show,
Speaker 1: longtime friend of ours both on and off the air.
Speaker 4: He's kind of like our big brother in a way.
Speaker 7: Friends and neighbors.
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, Hey, guys, hey man.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2: I've always thought of you as a bit of a
Speaker 2: big brother figure. I feel like you're always watching.
Speaker 6: Like that's a little more my style for sure. The
Speaker 6: hug like hey, you can do it kind of.
Speaker 4: Well in my mind, it's more of a watching you
Speaker 4: walk and then trying to find a way to fit
Speaker 4: in those footsteps, at least in some small.
Speaker 2: Way like matches gate like kind of like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: really just trying.
Speaker 7: That explains so much.
Speaker 6: My gate is more of like a it's kind of
Speaker 6: like a speedwalk, slash jazz or size cross things. So
Speaker 6: it's tough to replicate. Man, I've seen you try, and
Speaker 6: I think it's adorable.
Speaker 1: Thanks, So hopefully, hopefully, Matt, you will have some time
Speaker 1: to perfect that gate. And that leads us to the
Speaker 1: big question, Josh. You recently created a podcast called The
Speaker 1: End of the World, and one of the questions that
Speaker 1: a lot of people have when we talk about the
Speaker 1: end of the world is really a question of timeline.
Speaker 1: You know, how much time does Matt Frederick have to
Speaker 1: practice his gate?
Speaker 6: Matt, I would give you one to two centuries tops, whoa,
Speaker 6: which sounds like a lot of time. It does. You're like, well,
Speaker 6: I'll be long in the grave most likely, although I
Speaker 6: don't know you might live to a substantial portion of that.
Speaker 6: But if you step back and think, what about the children,
Speaker 6: what about the grandchildren, what about the future humans who
Speaker 6: will will come down the line over the next one
Speaker 6: hundred two hundred years, and then if you look beyond
Speaker 6: that and really take a step back and look at
Speaker 6: how long some people expect humanity to continue on into
Speaker 6: the billions of years, all of a sudden, the idea
Speaker 6: of going extinct in the next one hundred to two
Speaker 6: hundred years suddenly becomes really terrifying and scary. If you
Speaker 6: can kind of step outside of yourself.
Speaker 4: Well quickly, let's just get kind of an idea of
Speaker 4: what happens if humanity just does great, we don't we
Speaker 4: don't kill ourselves off, some giant external thing doesn't wipe
Speaker 4: humanity out. That billion years that you talked about for
Speaker 4: humanity is that cut off date when the Sun essentially
Speaker 4: creates death everywhere in our solar system.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, Yeah, that's a thing for sure. A lot
Speaker 6: of people say, if humanity didn't do anything, just kept
Speaker 6: plotting along and rather than doing everything right, we just
Speaker 6: kind of got lucky at every possible break. Okay, a
Speaker 6: billion years is about how long we would last, because
Speaker 6: that's about how long the Earth will last in its
Speaker 6: place in the solar system. The Sun's going to grow, row,
Speaker 6: and it will eventually basically swallow the Earth.
Speaker 2: Just totally subsume it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, everything, Yes, it's gonna it'll be bad news for
Speaker 6: the Earth, but we've got a good billion years and
Speaker 6: we can have a lot of fun and do a
Speaker 6: lot of cool stuff in a billion years. That's the
Speaker 6: low end, right, that's if we do nothing but just
Speaker 6: hang around on Earth.
Speaker 7: But alast people are kind of dumb.
Speaker 6: You could make that case. It's true, but but there's
Speaker 6: also a lot of hope to future ingenuity. And then
Speaker 6: also I think as far as dumbness goes contemporarily, it's
Speaker 6: more complacency than being dumb, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: It's almost like there's some weird death cult mentality among
Speaker 6: a lot of people on Earth where it's just like,
Speaker 6: if humanity goes extinct, that's just what happens. Is maybe
Speaker 6: we deserve it, which drives me bananas that sentiment, that
Speaker 6: idea that maybe humanity deserves to go extinct. We've screwed
Speaker 6: it up for so long. Maybe this is what we
Speaker 6: have coming. And I disagree with that tremendously. But some
Speaker 6: experts say, Okay, if we continue on like being humans
Speaker 6: and the kind of humans that we are at this point,
Speaker 6: we're probably going to do some pretty interesting things like
Speaker 6: get off of Earth in the near future. Actually maybe
Speaker 6: one hundred years, maybe two hundred years, maybe five hundre years,
Speaker 6: even if it's a thousand years, that's plenty of time
Speaker 6: for us to just basically be like Audios Earth, that
Speaker 6: was nice. Or if you're starting to look into like
Speaker 6: the millions of years and all the things we could
Speaker 6: possibly do, maybe we can move Earth, or maybe we
Speaker 6: can prevent the Sun from growing, because actually what it's
Speaker 6: doing is burning the last of its fuel. There's plenty
Speaker 6: of ways we could make the Sun burn more efficiently
Speaker 6: and extend its life by billions of years and then
Speaker 6: save Earth in the process. There's a lot of stuff
Speaker 6: we could be doing. So when you start to look
Speaker 6: into that, then you begin to run into the top
Speaker 6: limit for humanity's lifetime lifespan into the billions and billions
Speaker 6: and billions of years, possibly to the heat death of
Speaker 6: the universe, which is untold billions of years away into
Speaker 6: the future.
Speaker 7: The final end of the franchise.
Speaker 6: Not necessarily, not necessarily, because one thing I came across
Speaker 6: and it kind of comes in at the end of
Speaker 6: the Physics episode is we are starting to figure out
Speaker 6: how we could theoretically create lab grown universes, so who
Speaker 6: knows why, Maybe we can learn to grow universes and
Speaker 6: when this one's starting to wind down, we can be like, oh, well,
Speaker 6: we're gonna move over here into this fresh new universe.
Speaker 6: And then that extends it indefinitely, humanity's lifespan indefinitely. So
Speaker 6: when you take all this into account, all of the
Speaker 6: possibility that we have laying out ahead of us, it's
Speaker 6: really unnerving to think that those of us, allie today
Speaker 6: have the weight of all that on our shoulders. It's
Speaker 6: up to us to save that future for the rest
Speaker 6: of humanity to come. And that's the stakes right now.
Speaker 1: Wow, So let's put we've got the context in terms
Speaker 1: of timeline here, let's look at the basic, the bare
Speaker 1: bones definitions. The end of the world deals with the
Speaker 1: phrase that we mentioned earlier in this show, existential risk.
Speaker 1: What for audience, what is an existential risk? And are
Speaker 1: some more let's see, more imminent than others.
Speaker 6: So great question. Existential risks are something that have been
Speaker 6: around for a very long time. We've lived under like
Speaker 6: natural existential risks like the sun growing and overwhelming Earth
Speaker 6: and burning it to a crisp. That's a natural existential risk.
Speaker 6: An existential risk is anything that can wipe out humanity forever,
Speaker 6: like we're just gone, there's no more humans left, or
Speaker 6: the humans that are left can never get back to
Speaker 6: whatever place in history that we fell from. That's an
Speaker 6: existential risk. And there's this guy over in Oxford, the
Speaker 6: Oxford University, who spends his time thinking about these things
Speaker 6: and has assembled this basically like super team of thinkers
Speaker 6: who are all thinking about what to do about existential risks,
Speaker 6: what existential risks we're not thinking about, and then what
Speaker 6: to do if we do manage to pass these existential
Speaker 6: risks that are coming our way and live into the
Speaker 6: billions of years, all the amazing things we could do.
Speaker 6: So the guy's name is Nick Bostrom, and the center
Speaker 6: that he founded is called the Future of Humanity Institute.
Speaker 6: And they're not the only group thinking about this, but
Speaker 6: they're kind of like the og group who started thinking
Speaker 6: about these things. And Nick Bostrom is kind of widely
Speaker 6: viewed as basically the father of the field of existential
Speaker 6: risk mitigation, and he really kind of took some disparate
Speaker 6: thoughts that guys like Derek Parfitt and Carl Sagan had
Speaker 6: back in about the eighties and put him together into
Speaker 6: like a genuine, refined philosophy that's basically based on we
Speaker 6: need to do something pretty soon or we were, we
Speaker 6: probably aren't going to make it.
Speaker 7: TikTok, TikTok, TikTok.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: That's my question though, is our existential risks inherently something
Speaker 2: that's external to our actions as humans on the planet
Speaker 2: of things that we do that could potentially, you know,
Speaker 2: cause us to not exist as a species, like you know,
Speaker 2: climate change and things like that, the impacts that we
Speaker 2: have on the planet, or is it all about like
Speaker 2: things that are beyond our control, that are bigger than
Speaker 2: us that we don't have control.
Speaker 6: It's both, for sure, And so there's there's natural existential
Speaker 6: risks like the sun growing and asteroid like the kind
Speaker 6: that took out the dinosaurs, wiping it out, wiping us out.
Speaker 6: Those we can't do a whole lot about now. We
Speaker 6: can all imagine a time like maybe a few decades
Speaker 6: from now, where we can direct redirect the course of
Speaker 6: like an asteroid that could be colliding with Earth. Right
Speaker 6: but right now we can't do anything about the natural risks.
Speaker 6: The ones we can do something about are anthropogenic existential risks,
Speaker 6: which are human made existential risks, and we have a
Speaker 6: few of those coming down the pike coming our way.
Speaker 6: There is Artificial intelligence is a big one. Another one
Speaker 6: is physics. Surprisingly high energy physics experiments may or may
Speaker 6: not pose an existential risk. But if some of the
Speaker 6: some of the theories of quantum gravity that seek to
Speaker 6: move marry the standard model with relativity, if some of
Speaker 6: those are right, then actually, yes, these physics experiments are
Speaker 6: quite dangerous that we're doing right now. And then biotechnology
Speaker 6: is another big one, and there's some other ones too,
Speaker 6: like nanotech could conceivably be an existential risk to us,
Speaker 6: and all of these things. As we're starting to wake
Speaker 6: up to the concept of existential risks, as our field
Speaker 6: of vision is kind of coming into focus, we're suddenly
Speaker 6: recognizing like, oh, there's one. Oh, there's another one. Oh
Speaker 6: there's one.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 6: Oh geez, there's another one right there, and they're starting
Speaker 6: to come our way, and very few people are paying
Speaker 6: attention to them. That's really the alarming part of the
Speaker 6: whole thing.
Speaker 1: Isn't It also mentioned earlier that it's a situation rooted
Speaker 1: in apathy for a lot of people. But one of
Speaker 1: the questions people will have when they hear this is
Speaker 1: if we're talking about a global existential risk, if we're
Speaker 1: talking about not just a risk, a threat that's bigger
Speaker 1: than an individual's action, how would people mitigate something global?
Speaker 1: Like how Let's say my name is Dave Everyman and
Speaker 1: I'm listening here in Manitoba for some reason, and I say, man,
Speaker 1: the wild animals are dying at this incredibly cartoonish rate,
Speaker 1: which will topple the ecosystem.
Speaker 7: Right in the food chain. But what can I do?
Speaker 7: I'm just Dave Everyman.
Speaker 6: So first of all, I was wondering when it was
Speaker 6: going to get crazy, And now that Dave Everyman has
Speaker 6: made an appearance, it's quite obvious it just happened. So
Speaker 6: that kind of ties into something you said earlier, knowl
Speaker 6: that you were asking about, was like climate change is
Speaker 6: you know, climate change actually doesn't necessarily count as an
Speaker 6: existential risk. As bad as it would be now, it
Speaker 6: would for plenty of species that will be affected and
Speaker 6: wiped out, Like it's starting to look like coral climate
Speaker 6: change is going to be an existential threat to coral
Speaker 6: or it is already, but to humans. And that's the thing,
Speaker 6: like we I really want to focus this in, like
Speaker 6: I'm talking about humans when I'm talking about existential risks.
Speaker 6: In the entire series, it's all about things that can
Speaker 6: wipe out humanity, but existential risks exist for basically any
Speaker 6: living thing on Earth. And it turns out from what
Speaker 6: I saw something kind of came up as humans are
Speaker 6: actually an existential threat to just about everything else on Earth, right,
Speaker 6: And I think kind of part and parcel to us
Speaker 6: saving ourselves and saving the world right is at the
Speaker 6: same time simultaneously learning that kind of being at the
Speaker 6: top of the food chain, being Dave, everyman who has
Speaker 6: the ability to think and act about this kind of
Speaker 6: stuff that makes us stewards for or the rest of
Speaker 6: the planet. So even if climate change is not an
Speaker 6: existential threat to humans, which it seems like it's not,
Speaker 6: from taking on existential risks, from taking on existential threats,
Speaker 6: we should, in my opinion, kind of change our mentality,
Speaker 6: whether we like it or not, whether we're trying to
Speaker 6: or not, though our outlook would change, and I think
Speaker 6: that things like climate change would be mitigated. And this
Speaker 6: idea that Dave Everyman can't do anything to help that
Speaker 6: sense of hopelessness that just kind of presses all of us,
Speaker 6: you know, down into our couches and into this funk.
Speaker 6: That kind of thing will go away. And the reason
Speaker 6: why it will go away, the reason why we can
Speaker 6: do anything, why Dave every Man can do anything at all,
Speaker 6: is because it turns out no one at the top
Speaker 6: is doing anything. I talked to this philosopher named Toby
Speaker 6: ort who's one of the guys at the Future of
Speaker 6: Humanity Institute, and he has spoken to people in the
Speaker 6: highest echelons of government about this. One of the things
Speaker 6: they do is is try to like warn people and
Speaker 6: government and say, hey, you're a policy maker. They're not
Speaker 6: designing AI very well right now, and one of them
Speaker 6: could get out of control and take over the world.
Speaker 6: What do you think about that? What are you guys
Speaker 6: doing about that? Oh, well, you know, that's really kind
Speaker 6: of above my pay grade. I'm sure someone else is
Speaker 6: handling this. And Toby Oorver's like, there's nobody above your
Speaker 6: pay grade, Like, it's up to you guys. If you're
Speaker 6: not doing anything, then that means no one's doing anything.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, they're stuck in like a cycle of elections, right,
Speaker 4: that's all those things for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a big part of the problems as far
Speaker 6: as like leadership goes is you know, not just with
Speaker 6: existential risks, but basically any large project, any long term thing.
Speaker 6: That's one of the things that climate change is run
Speaker 6: up into.
Speaker 2: Well, but it's politicized too, so it's like literally you're
Speaker 2: appealing to a particular base by choosing to say something's
Speaker 2: not really a problem or ignoring it.
Speaker 7: Sure, that's almost.
Speaker 2: Like a power move to say this isn't really happening,
Speaker 2: I know, because I'm in charge or I'm the smartest
Speaker 2: guy in the room, right and I ignore all these
Speaker 2: other people that are saying that it is, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like, it's not it's not it's almost
Speaker 2: ignorance as a like a move kind of you know.
Speaker 6: Like willful.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: And it's a disdain for expertise too. I think that's
Speaker 6: a really popular thing right now. And that kind of
Speaker 6: ties into that whole death cult thing that bothers me
Speaker 6: so much. You know, it's it's like, you're a scientist,
Speaker 6: I don't care, you know, get out of my face, egghead,
Speaker 6: I don't care about the climate. And that's just kind
Speaker 6: of a sentiment, just a feeling. That's not the entire zeitgeist,
Speaker 6: but it's definitely a part of the zeitgeist right now
Speaker 6: for sure.
Speaker 2: It's almost like we don't have that much time anyway,
Speaker 2: so let's just get the most out of it that
Speaker 2: we can in the short time we have, not really
Speaker 2: worry about the next part.
Speaker 6: You know what I mean. It's basically like the disco
Speaker 6: era took over the entire world. You know, That's kind
Speaker 6: of what it feels like.
Speaker 1: So we'll pause here and continue after a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Here's the question.
Speaker 7: Here's the turn for our show, because now.
Speaker 1: We're talking about will foil ignorance or anti intellectualism and
Speaker 1: and all these other all these other flavors of governance
Speaker 1: and society, right or the problematic flavors. Is there, to
Speaker 1: your knowledge, any sort of cover up or conspiratorial events
Speaker 1: surrounding any of these existential risks?
Speaker 7: You knew you knew we were gonna ask this.
Speaker 6: I was hoping. I think I prematurely caught the where
Speaker 6: it got crazy with the Dave Everyman thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, but I really appreciate you doubling down on Dave
Speaker 1: every shure, Well.
Speaker 6: I think I quadrupled down on Dave everyman, and it's
Speaker 6: pronounced every man the British pronounces of the Manitoba every Okay, gotcha. Now,
Speaker 6: now I know exactly who you're talking about, So uh I,
Speaker 6: I'm quite sure that there have been. I don't think
Speaker 6: that there are, in necessarily in fields like AI. I
Speaker 6: I know that the physics community is actually quite the
Speaker 6: opposite of that. They the people at CERN in particular,
Speaker 6: have been working over time while also simultaneously bending over
Speaker 6: backwards to show that the large Hadron Collider is safe.
Speaker 6: But the thing that made that episode, the physics episode,
Speaker 6: the most interesting to me is a lot of the
Speaker 6: suggestions that it might not be safe are coming from physicists.
Speaker 6: It's not from just external you know, guys who who
Speaker 6: you know declared their own patch of land in Nevada
Speaker 6: Country or anything like that. It's like actual physicists who
Speaker 6: work with particle colliders, who work in theory. And also
Speaker 6: I didn't mean to denigrate a lot of their demographics,
Speaker 6: just now that they they are the They are the
Speaker 6: people who are kind of raising the alarm on particle
Speaker 6: colliders possibly creating microscopic bike holes and that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: So if I had to zero in on one group
Speaker 6: where there was, if not necessarily like conspiratorial cover ups,
Speaker 6: at the very least a lot of kind of brushing
Speaker 6: stuff under the rug, it would be the biotech field
Speaker 6: for sure. For sure, the level of recklessness and accident proneness,
Speaker 6: I guess is a terrible way to put it, that
Speaker 6: comes out of the biotech field, and certainly not the
Speaker 6: entire biotech field. There's plenty of people in the biotech field,
Speaker 6: and I would say the vast majority of the biotech
Speaker 6: field is very, very careful. But the problem with biotech
Speaker 6: is that even if you are careful, accidents still happen.
Speaker 6: And if you go back and you look at the statistics,
Speaker 6: not even statistics, like actual numbers of like accidental releases
Speaker 6: of deadly, deadly pathogens from labs into the great wide world,
Speaker 6: just over a very short time. We're talking hundreds and
Speaker 6: hundreds of them. And the thing that bothers me the
Speaker 6: most about biotech when I researched this, I started to
Speaker 6: get like kind of mad. I'm like, this angers me
Speaker 6: that there's this field and no one. I can't say
Speaker 6: no one, but very few people and certainly not enough
Speaker 6: people are paying attention to and regulating the biotech field.
Speaker 6: There are some really reckless experiments that are being carried out,
Speaker 6: and there are just a small fraction of labs in
Speaker 6: the world are required to report accidents even let alone
Speaker 6: what they're doing or what kind of experiments sec carrying
Speaker 6: out accidents like meaning a deadly pathogen made it out
Speaker 6: in the skin of a lab worker who didn't realize
Speaker 6: it and it started to kind of spread or whatever.
Speaker 6: You don't like if you were a private corporate lab
Speaker 6: working in the biotech field and an accident happens, you
Speaker 6: don't have to tell anybody about it. You don't have
Speaker 6: to tell a single soul. You have to be funded
Speaker 6: by the National Institutes of Health in the United States
Speaker 6: or be affiliated with a lab in the United States
Speaker 6: funded by the National Institutes of Health to be required
Speaker 6: to poor accidents. So of the like six hundred and
Speaker 6: fifty accidental releases between I think two thousand and four
Speaker 6: and twenty ten, maybe those were specifically accidents reported by
Speaker 6: labs that are funded by the NIH. That's it. Wow,
Speaker 6: there are so many more labs BSL three and four
Speaker 6: labs those are the most the most secure labs, but
Speaker 6: that means that they're also the ones who are working
Speaker 6: with the deadliest pathogens. There are so many of those
Speaker 6: in the world, and it's become such a like a
Speaker 6: cool thing to be a corporation or like a university,
Speaker 6: or to have a BSL three or four lab. No
Speaker 6: one has any idea how many there are in the world.
Speaker 6: Not a single person on planet Earth knows exactly how
Speaker 6: many BSL three and four labs there are on Earth
Speaker 6: right now.
Speaker 2: So where is the oversight coming from for those labs?
Speaker 6: I mean basically nowhere. I think the USDA has some jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: Like OSHA or something they don't have like work site
Speaker 2: hazard you know, inspections and things like that.
Speaker 6: So as far as I'm sure that they do as
Speaker 6: far as like OSHA goes, yeah, I think that that
Speaker 6: would that would be extended to everything, including those labs.
Speaker 6: But as far as like reporting it to like the
Speaker 6: CDC or the NIH, there's no requirements unless you are
Speaker 6: NIH funded.
Speaker 7: That's terrifying.
Speaker 6: It is extremely terrible.
Speaker 1: And we're just talking about the United States right exactly.
Speaker 6: So if you are, you know, working in a lab
Speaker 6: in Korea, Korea. South Korea, I'm sure has like legislation
Speaker 6: or laws that say, you know, you have to do this,
Speaker 6: or you have to follow these rules or whatever, but
Speaker 6: there's there's no there's certainly no universal oversight agency. The
Speaker 6: UN has is toothless in this respect, in almost every respect,
Speaker 6: but certainly in this respect right like toothless. The World
Speaker 6: Health Organization has like zero say in this. It's just
Speaker 6: it's just the wild West. And unfortunately, there are microbiologists
Speaker 6: and plenty of them in field who are like, whoaha, whoa,
Speaker 6: whoa what what experiment did you just run? Like you
Speaker 6: just escalated the contagiousness of this deadly flu virus so
Speaker 6: that it can be passed more easily among mammals. Why
Speaker 6: did you just do that? We should have a two
Speaker 6: or three or four year moratorium on those kind of experiments.
Speaker 6: And that kind of thing does get observed in the field,
Speaker 6: but it takes people in the field to do that
Speaker 6: to raise the alarm, and they don't always do it,
Speaker 6: and it's not necessarily having this sweeping effect. And then
Speaker 6: after they raised the alarm and study the problem, there's
Speaker 6: nobody stepping in and saying, yeah, don't do that. Anymore
Speaker 6: really quickly.
Speaker 4: I just want to stay in here because something that
Speaker 4: I kind of knew about, but I learned a lot
Speaker 4: more about through listening to your podcast was gain a
Speaker 4: function research, right, And what exactly that is? Can you
Speaker 4: just tell us about that and why it's so dangerous?
Speaker 7: Sure?
Speaker 6: So I talked to a few experts, like legitimate experts
Speaker 6: on this, and gainunction research is where you take a
Speaker 6: wild virus, I guess, a natural virus, and you force
Speaker 6: a mutation in it so that it becomes deadlier or
Speaker 6: it becomes more contagious, or it becomes less susceptible to
Speaker 6: treatments or drugs or something like that. And when when
Speaker 6: you force mutations in this virus or a pathogen of
Speaker 6: any sort and it becomes deadlier or more contagious or
Speaker 6: less susceptible, it has gained function, is what they call it.
Speaker 6: So gain a function research is basically taking evolution and
Speaker 6: speeding it up. And they'll do things like they'll force
Speaker 6: a bunch of mutations and kind of selectively breed a
Speaker 6: virus until they think it has the kind of the
Speaker 6: kind of like maybe contagiousness they're looking for, and then
Speaker 6: they'll introduce it into like a ferret's nose, and they'll
Speaker 6: take that and introduce it to another ferret's nose, and
Speaker 6: they'll just basically speed up the process of an infection
Speaker 6: a pandemic among you know, lab animals. And this was
Speaker 6: done with I think H five N one in a
Speaker 6: couple of different labs simultaneously but independently. It's really weird.
Speaker 6: They took this really really deadly virus and they basically
Speaker 6: taught it to be transferred from one ferret to another
Speaker 6: through like sneezes and coughs. The saving grace, the thing
Speaker 6: that's kept us all alive as far as H five
Speaker 6: N one goes, except for a handful of unlucky people,
Speaker 6: is that it's really tough to spread. It's really really deadly.
Speaker 6: I think it has like a seventy or eighty percent
Speaker 6: mortality rate, but it's really hard to catch. Well, these
Speaker 6: guys were forcing gain a function to make that virus
Speaker 6: much easier to catch. And when they started publishing these
Speaker 6: these studies, the field just went nuts. They were not
Speaker 6: having it. They were very upset about this. They said,
Speaker 6: this was very reckless. Why are you doing this in
Speaker 6: the first place. And then some people have even said,
Speaker 6: these experiments did not need to take place at all.
Speaker 6: You can actually study the same kind of stuff just
Speaker 6: by studying proteins. You don't have to have a wild
Speaker 6: or live, active, deadly virus that you're creating this in.
Speaker 6: You can just study the proteins. So if you kind
Speaker 6: of step back, or I should say, if you dig
Speaker 6: a little deeper into it, you start to get the
Speaker 6: impression that there's a lot of ego that are driving
Speaker 6: experiments like this just to kind of show that it
Speaker 6: can be done. And the field has a really extensive
Speaker 6: history of that kind of like gun slinging recklessness, like
Speaker 6: look what I did. And the problem is is when
Speaker 6: you create a virus like that, it's alive. It lives
Speaker 6: on Earth with us, and that means that it is
Speaker 6: your responsibility for the rest of time to either one
Speaker 6: hundred percent eradicate it from Earth or you have to
Speaker 6: keep up with it make sure it doesn't get out.
Speaker 6: And if it does get out, well that's a big
Speaker 6: problem because now you have an H five N one
Speaker 6: virus that's extremely deadly and also extremely contagious, and that's
Speaker 6: the existential threat posed in the biotech field. There are
Speaker 6: really risky experiments being carried out, and they also have
Speaker 6: a long history of being accident prone as well. That's
Speaker 6: the one that gets my blood raised the most.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you could tell it's scary.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a terrifying proposition, because we hear in
Speaker 1: the news cycle, right, we hear about maybe once every
Speaker 1: year and a half a report of a virulent strain
Speaker 1: of something breaking out in a specific part of the world,
Speaker 1: and the question is always how far will it get
Speaker 1: this time?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: So are you saying that there is a real and
Speaker 1: substantial possibility that some sort of aggressively modified virus or
Speaker 1: contagion really could just through the slip of someone's hand,
Speaker 1: spread across the planet.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's not one of those things where one
Speaker 6: virus being experimented on and one lab poses a significant
Speaker 6: risk to humanity. But it is a risk just that
Speaker 6: one virus in that one lab does pose a risk
Speaker 6: just by the very fact that it exists. And there
Speaker 6: are such things as humans who are accident prone experimenting
Speaker 6: on them. Right. So the problem comes when you have many,
Speaker 6: many people running the same or similar experiments with the
Speaker 6: same or similar viruses all over the world in an
Speaker 6: unknown number of labs, then that one that one remote
Speaker 6: risk starts to compound and get a little a little
Speaker 6: more dangerous than a little more dicey. I don't think
Speaker 6: that there's any virus right now that could conceivably wipe
Speaker 6: out one hundred percent of humanity or so many humans
Speaker 6: that we would we could never possibly rebuild civilization ten
Speaker 6: thousand years down the road. I don't think so. I
Speaker 6: don't know. I'm not in the biotech field, but from
Speaker 6: the outside looking in to the the progression of the
Speaker 6: field over the last few decades in particular, it does
Speaker 6: seem like that's the direction it's going. From my view,
Speaker 6: just mine, and I'm not an expert, but from my view,
Speaker 6: the sentiment, or the sentiment that I've kind of tapped into, is,
Speaker 6: if you are a microbiologist of the kind of cowboy ilk,
Speaker 6: coming up with a contagious virus with one hundred percent
Speaker 6: mortality would be like your crowning achievement, basically, And the
Speaker 6: whole premise of this is to study it so we
Speaker 6: can figure out how to treat them. And that is
Speaker 6: like a that's a legitimate avenue of research, that's the
Speaker 6: main avenue of research for virology. That's the point largely.
Speaker 6: But do we need to force gain of function in
Speaker 6: viruses that don't exist like that in order to treat it?
Speaker 6: That's the question that I have, and to me, the
Speaker 6: answer is no. I think there are definitely ways to
Speaker 6: do it, and we should be focusing our research and
Speaker 6: figuring out how to treat viruses that could conceivably get
Speaker 6: like that without creating them first.
Speaker 1: So, assuming that the world doesn't end, we'll be right
Speaker 1: back after a word from our sponsor. I'd like to
Speaker 1: take a slight pivot here and ask a couple of
Speaker 1: biographical questions we probably.
Speaker 7: Should have asked in the beginning.
Speaker 1: This is This entire interview has made me very conscious
Speaker 1: of time as well. Okay, I hope we have enough
Speaker 1: time to finish. One thing a lot of people would
Speaker 1: want to know is whether there was some specific moment
Speaker 1: in your life that inspired the End of the World series.
Speaker 7: Was it?
Speaker 1: Was it something related to biotech? Did you like get
Speaker 1: a nasty cold and the doctor said, boy, uh, this
Speaker 1: is weird job to sit down.
Speaker 7: You're what happens?
Speaker 6: Have you been hanging out with Ferretts lately? I actually
Speaker 6: was sick while I wrote the Biotech episode but yeah,
Speaker 6: which just really drove everything home that much more. The
Speaker 6: thing that inspired me to do the series, which and
Speaker 6: also I want to just take this time right now,
Speaker 6: is to thank all three of you for your roles
Speaker 6: in helping me with the series. Like overtime, all three
Speaker 6: of you had a hand in it, and I appreciate
Speaker 6: it big time. So thank you. That's off to all
Speaker 6: three of you as well.
Speaker 4: We were excited to hear it.
Speaker 6: I was too. It finally came out. But the whole
Speaker 6: thing started, as you probably know, just from this kind
Speaker 6: of intellectual curiosity about it, Like I ran across Nick
Speaker 6: Bostro many years ago and read some of his papers
Speaker 6: and I just found it fascinating and I still find
Speaker 6: it fascinating. So the original point of the series was
Speaker 6: to say, hey, everybody, check this out, and that's the
Speaker 6: coolest thing you've ever heard in your life. And as
Speaker 6: I dug into it more and more and started to
Speaker 6: actually interview the people involved, like Nick Bostrom and Toby
Speaker 6: or and other people at the Future of Humanity Institute,
Speaker 6: I realized, oh wait, this isn't this isn't just an
Speaker 6: intellectual pursuit. These people are doing like they're actually trying
Speaker 6: to warn the world like this is real, Like wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 6: wait what this is real? And the the I underwent
Speaker 6: a conversion, and then so too did the series because
Speaker 6: I was still working on the series at the time,
Speaker 6: and there was a huge tone shift in the series.
Speaker 6: It went from straight basically like a very dry book
Speaker 6: report to Okay, we need to do something, everybody, and
Speaker 6: this kind of thread of we need to form a movement,
Speaker 6: we need to start doing something emerged in the series
Speaker 6: and took on almost became like a character in the series,
Speaker 6: or certainly a theme, a major theme. So it was
Speaker 6: originally intellectual interest that brought me to it, and then
Speaker 6: I kind of got struck by life on the way
Speaker 6: to finishing and it changed the tone big time.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you what made me want to put my
Speaker 4: phone down and join up the movement. And it was
Speaker 4: in one of the episodes where you talk about a
Speaker 4: certain three and a million chants that occurred in the
Speaker 4: nineteen forties.
Speaker 6: Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 4: Can you tell us a little bit of that story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, what's widely seen as the first human made
Speaker 6: existential risk that we've ever faced was the first detonation
Speaker 6: of an atomic bomb at the Trinity Test on July sixteenth,
Speaker 6: nineteen forty five, in Almagordo, New Mexico, USA. And it
Speaker 6: wasn't that they were saying, yes, this think's going to
Speaker 6: be a deadly weapon, this is an existential risk. A
Speaker 6: lot of people make the case and I kind of
Speaker 6: subscribe to it too, that the nuclear bomb has never
Speaker 6: been an existential threat to humanity like nuclear war, I
Speaker 6: should say, has never actually been because we can't we
Speaker 6: probably couldn't wipe all of humanity out. And again, that's
Speaker 6: the thing that separates existential risks from all other types
Speaker 6: of risk. Everything else, we have a chance to rebuild,
Speaker 6: we have a chance to learn from that mistake. With
Speaker 6: existential risks, there's no second chances, there's no do over.
Speaker 6: One thing. One thing goes wrong, that's it for everybody, right, and.
Speaker 4: The first t Yeah, So the nuclear bomb, just to
Speaker 4: say this, the nuclear bomb was not the existential risk. Again,
Speaker 4: was not officially that part wasn't the existential risk, right.
Speaker 6: It was the detonation that conceivably posed an existential risk.
Speaker 6: I should say it was the first possible human made
Speaker 6: existential risk. And the reason it was is they were
Speaker 6: sitting around the dudes at the Manhattan Project, and I
Speaker 6: think it was Edward Teller. This is like the first
Speaker 6: time they all formally met, and Edward Teller was like, hey,
Speaker 6: has anybody thought might we accidentally ignite the atmosphere with
Speaker 6: this thing? You know, we're about to dump a massive
Speaker 6: amount of energy into the atmosphere. It could set off
Speaker 6: a chain reaction, don't you're thinking. I've read different accounts
Speaker 6: of it. Some people say that it was immediately shouted
Speaker 6: down and they all realized, no, it's fine, it's fine, whatever,
Speaker 6: and then somebody ended up telling Arthur Compton, and Arthur
Speaker 6: Compton was like, oh, fiddlesticks, like, we need to do
Speaker 6: some of them about this, and he assigned Teller and
Speaker 6: a couple of other guys to go figure out whether
Speaker 6: it was possible. So, depending on what story you hear,
Speaker 6: either it was like this great, like, guys, we got
Speaker 6: to get to the bottom of this, or it was
Speaker 6: kind of like a side project. But either way, they
Speaker 6: definitely assigned Teller and a small group to go figure out,
Speaker 6: you know, mathematically, if that was possible.
Speaker 4: And just to be clear, we're talking about the entire atmosphere,
Speaker 4: not just a section of atmosphere, the Earth's entire atmosphere.
Speaker 7: Chain reaction, essentially.
Speaker 6: That was the fear that when they set off this
Speaker 6: first atomic bomb, because no one had ever set off
Speaker 6: an atomic bomb before, it wasn't even at the time
Speaker 6: known whether it was possible. There was still a chance
Speaker 6: that it was going to be an impossibility to create
Speaker 6: a nuclear explosion. But they were saying, if we do
Speaker 6: do this, I mean like, if we started a chain
Speaker 6: reaction in the atmosphere, it could spread and burn off
Speaker 6: the entire atmosphere on Earth, and then life would just
Speaker 6: cease to exist in very short order. So they started
Speaker 6: to study this, and they came back and said, there
Speaker 6: is a almost no chance that this is going to happen,
Speaker 6: even even accounting for energy way beyond what we're going
Speaker 6: to be doing with the bomb, where it's not going
Speaker 6: to happen. But these guys are physicists, and physicists don't
Speaker 6: deal in certainty, they deal in probability, and so there
Speaker 6: was still that small, small chance that they could accidentally
Speaker 6: ignite the atmosphere with this. So later on years later,
Speaker 6: they went ahead with the test. They decided that the
Speaker 6: possibility was small enough that it was worth taking the
Speaker 6: risk because at the time, the Nazis were still going strong,
Speaker 6: and they were like, this is this is worth you know,
Speaker 6: the small chance that we're going to nite the atmosphere
Speaker 6: is worth, you know, taking over the Nazis with this
Speaker 6: bomb that we're going to produce from this test eventually.
Speaker 6: But the years later, the guy who was running the
Speaker 6: Manhattan Project at the time, his name was Arthur Compton.
Speaker 6: He told the writer Pearl Buck about this story and
Speaker 6: he said, I drew a line in the sand. I
Speaker 6: said that if there was a three and a million
Speaker 6: chants of igniting the atmosphere, we wouldn't go through with
Speaker 6: the test. And so over the years some people have
Speaker 6: been like, was it one in a million? Did he misspeak?
Speaker 6: Like was there any chance whatsoever? But that was supposedly
Speaker 6: the way that we handled the first existential risk, which
Speaker 6: in a lot of ways was like great, you know,
Speaker 6: hats off, Like they took it seriously, they studied it,
Speaker 6: they did the math, they carried the one and all
Speaker 6: that stuff right. But then if you step back and
Speaker 6: look at it another way, that they decided for the
Speaker 6: rest of the people alive on Earth at the time
Speaker 6: that this three and a million chances was worth it.
Speaker 6: It was worth the risk. And I'm sure there's plenty
Speaker 6: of people still alive today and who would have been
Speaker 6: alive back then who would have said, no, no, it's
Speaker 6: actually not worth that risk. Three in a million is
Speaker 6: actually not that remote of a chance. Like you have
Speaker 6: a one in a million chance of being struck by
Speaker 6: lightning if you live in North America. I can't remember
Speaker 6: if it's any given year or your lifetime, but a
Speaker 6: one in million, this is a three times greater chance
Speaker 6: of being struck by lightning that they were going to
Speaker 6: ignite the atmosphere. And so if you kind of look
Speaker 6: at the probability compared to other probabilities, it suddenly made
Speaker 6: it seem like maybe that wasn't such a good idea
Speaker 6: to carry out the test anyway, And so I kind
Speaker 6: of used that in I think episode nine as kind
Speaker 6: of this teaching example, like it gives us a model
Speaker 6: of how to approach existential risks, but it also shows
Speaker 6: us what not to do, and that's not to have
Speaker 6: just a small cadre of people working in secret to
Speaker 6: decide for the the rest of the world without any input,
Speaker 6: whether something's worth the risk or not. And That's one
Speaker 6: of the reasons why we all need to be involved.
Speaker 6: Why Dave, everyman from Manitoba needs to be involved, while
Speaker 6: you guys need to be involved. Why I need to
Speaker 6: be involved, Because again, there's no one at the top
Speaker 6: thinking about this stuff, and it's going to take a
Speaker 6: bottom up process. But for us to do it correctly,
Speaker 6: for us not to just be like I don't think
Speaker 6: it's worth the risk. We all need to understand the
Speaker 6: science behind all this stuff. We need to be informed.
Speaker 6: So we need to if we're going to decide together,
Speaker 6: it has to be a smart decision, you know, And
Speaker 6: we have to convert that death cult into the thinking
Speaker 6: cult to take on existential risks because basically everybody needs
Speaker 6: to be on board, and at the very least the
Speaker 6: people who aren't on board need to get out of
Speaker 6: the way and not work counter to the stuff that
Speaker 6: everyone else is trying to do.
Speaker 1: You know, I got to be honest, that was incredibly
Speaker 1: well said, and I kind of felt music swelling. I
Speaker 1: don't know if Paul's going to put it in when
Speaker 1: we do this in post.
Speaker 7: But it does. It does lead us to.
Speaker 1: Some questions that naturally follow, one of which being we're
Speaker 1: talking about becoming more educated, becoming more aware of a situation,
Speaker 1: becoming less apathetic, realizing that there's no one truly in
Speaker 1: a room at the top. Right, But what do those
Speaker 1: next steps look like? What are the specific concrete things
Speaker 1: other than of course checking out the show?
Speaker 6: Right, Thanks for that, dude. So the first step that
Speaker 6: we have to take those of us alive today is
Speaker 6: to start talking about this kind of stuff. Like the
Speaker 6: more people talk about things, and I use the example
Speaker 6: of like the environmental movement, Like the environmental movement today
Speaker 6: has a lot left to do, a lot of work
Speaker 6: left to do, and who knows, maybe this kind of
Speaker 6: twelve year timeline that we've been given recently will we'll
Speaker 6: get people going a lot more seriously on climate change.
Speaker 6: But the fact is there is an environmental movement. There
Speaker 6: didn't used to be. Just in the sixties, the late
Speaker 6: sixties even there was basically no such thing as the
Speaker 6: environmental movement. Now, every eight year old can tell you
Speaker 6: tons of environmental facts, cares about the environment, knows what
Speaker 6: they can do to to make the earth a better place.
Speaker 6: We need to do the same thing with existential risks.
Speaker 6: So step one is for everybody to make this an issue.
Speaker 6: When all of us start talking about things like this,
Speaker 6: the people who we elect start paying attention. It's like, oh,
Speaker 6: this is what these guys want. Okay, I'm on board.
Speaker 6: It's not like they're necessarily opposed to what we're doing
Speaker 6: by principle, it's just not enough of us are talking
Speaker 6: about this kind of thing or that kind of thing
Speaker 6: or whatever. So the more of us start start talking
Speaker 6: about this, the more we're going to be able to
Speaker 6: get movement on it. We also need to basically take
Speaker 6: a lot of the scientific mental energy that we have
Speaker 6: avail and a lot of the money that we put
Speaker 6: towards science, and a lot of other stuff to divert
Speaker 6: to thinking about existential risks, identifying existential risks, identifying best practices.
Speaker 6: And then the next step is for those of us
Speaker 6: alive today to say, Okay, what'd you guys come up with?
Speaker 6: And then listen to them, not fight them, not say
Speaker 6: that sounds kind of hard, We can't do it, because
Speaker 6: what they come back to us with will be a
Speaker 6: roadmap for surviving the next one hundred to two hundred
Speaker 6: years as a species. Right, if we can just kind
Speaker 6: of alter our brains just a little bit in those
Speaker 6: relatively small ways, we will lay the groundwork for generations
Speaker 6: to come to build on. But that's the key. Those
Speaker 6: of us live today have to start now, or else
Speaker 6: we're just going to hamstring the ones to come. And
Speaker 6: in that sense, it really kind of bears a strong
Speaker 6: resemblance to environmentalism as well. So it's basically environmentalism for
Speaker 6: the human species is what we need to do. Start that.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 4: So everyone listening here, I would describe End of the
Speaker 4: World as if Black Mirror and Cosmos had a baby
Speaker 4: and then that baby made a podcast. And maybe that
Speaker 4: can't make it. Yes, oh yes it can. But if
Speaker 4: if that interests you as it did me, go check
Speaker 4: it out right now. You can find the End of
Speaker 4: the World on the iHeartRadio app. Is that the right
Speaker 4: way to say it. I've never done this before. Somebody
Speaker 4: want to do? You want to do it?
Speaker 7: Josh?
Speaker 4: You say where it is?
Speaker 6: You can find it on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 6: everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2: And not to mention, it's all there so you can
Speaker 2: beg the whole thing. It's all there for your listening pleasures.
Speaker 2: So all ten episodes. Yeah, and hats off to Paul too.
Speaker 2: You know, he was the supervising producer on It All job.
Speaker 2: Try to call him mission control.
Speaker 1: Also, also tell us how you feel after checking out
Speaker 1: the show. Tell us what really peaud your interest. Tell
Speaker 1: us if you have responses you can you can write
Speaker 1: to us.
Speaker 7: You could write to endo.
Speaker 1: The world on let's see Instagram, Twitter, all the hits,
Speaker 1: all the internet hits.
Speaker 6: Right mostly I'm on there's a there's a hashtag, yeah,
Speaker 6: hashtag you got to make the too symbol of the
Speaker 6: two fingers simple hashtag eot W Josh Clark is where
Speaker 6: you'll find that all over social And then I'm at
Speaker 6: Josh Clark on like Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. And
Speaker 6: then there's like some EO t W Josh Clark stuff.
Speaker 1: Too, And tell us, uh, tell us how you keep
Speaker 1: your optimism after you listen to the show. I don't
Speaker 1: want to spoil it too much because you should go
Speaker 1: check it out.
Speaker 4: So go ahead and find us again. We are conspiracy
Speaker 4: stuff on most socials, or conspiracy stuff show on Instagram.
Speaker 4: It just just tell us what you think this is.
Speaker 4: This kind of stuff keeps me up at night, honestly,
Speaker 4: and I don't know how you got through creating all
Speaker 4: of this content, Josh, because I mean, just listening to
Speaker 4: it and absorbing it as a listener gives you a
Speaker 4: certain amount of dread and hope. And it's almost this
Speaker 4: simultaneous like scared happy feeling. It's very strange, it's weird.
Speaker 4: It's very strange, and you've just been immersed in it
Speaker 4: and you're still here and you look you look to
Speaker 4: be fine.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's all show.
Speaker 4: And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
Speaker 4: have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
Speaker 4: get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 4: One of the best is to give us a call.
Speaker 4: Our number is one eight three three st d wy TK.
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Speaker 4: us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 5: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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