80. Bryan Walsh — End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.4 • 921 Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2019
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable—and inevitable—end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, 15-year veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race. Walsh and Shermer discuss these existential threats to humanity and what to do about them:
- nuclear weapons
- killer diseases
- climate change
- artificial intelligence
- biotechnology
- asteroids and volcanos
- extraterrestrials, and
- preparing for doomsday: should we all be doomsday preppers?
A graduate of Princeton University, Bryan Walsh worked as a foreign correspondent, reporter, and editor for TIME for over 15 years. He founded the award-winning Ecocentric blog on TIME.com and has reported from more than 20 countries on science and environmental stories like SARS, global warming, and extinction. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and son.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week's author new book author guest is Brian Walsh. He is the author of the new book |
| 0:07.4 | End Times a brief guide to the end of the world |
| 0:11.4 | Asteroids super volcanoes, rogue robots, and more. |
| 0:15.9 | Brian is a graduate of Princeton University |
| 0:18.4 | and it was a Time correspondent, |
| 0:20.8 | Time Magazine Foreign Correspondent for 15 years. |
| 0:24.0 | He founded the award-winning eco-centric blog on time.com, |
| 0:28.8 | and is reported from more than 20 countries |
| 0:31.0 | on science and environmental stories like SARS, global warming and extinction. |
| 0:36.1 | He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and son. |
| 0:39.0 | He covers all the great end times existential threats, |
| 0:43.0 | asteroids, volcanoes, nuclear weapons, climate change, |
| 0:46.2 | disease, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, |
| 0:48.9 | aliens, and then surviving the overview at the end. |
| 0:55.0 | It's a great book. |
| 0:58.3 | I listen to it on audio. |
| 1:00.2 | And it's like a Stephen King thriller, except these actually could happen. |
| 1:06.0 | Anyway, I'm, as you'll note at the beginning of the podcast, I'm a little skeptical of some of the |
| 1:12.4 | doomsday scenarios in as much as they may not. beginning of the podcast, I'm a little skeptical of some of the |
| 1:12.5 | doomsday scenarios in as much as they may not cause our total extinction, but as we |
| 1:17.2 | discuss wiping out half of humanity or even 10% of humanity would be |
| 1:21.8 | catastrophic enough. |
... |
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