Handle with Care
On the Media
WNYC Studios
4.6 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A group of climate scientists warn that the potential for humanity's mass extinction has been dangerously underexplored. On this week’s On the Media, we hear how facing our planet’s fragility could inspire hope, instead of despair, and a physicist explains how creation stories are essential for understanding our place in the universe.
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Luke Kemp [@LukaKemp], a Research Associate at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, on a new study that says we need to put more attention on the possibility of human extinction and other climate catastrophes. Bryan Walsh [@bryanrwalsh], editor of Vox’s ‘Future Perfect,’ also explains why our brains have a hard time processing catastrophes like climate change. Listen.
Charles Piller [@cpiller], investigative reporter for Science Magazine, on his six month investigation into how faulty images may invalidate groundbreaking advancements in Alzheimer's research. Listen.
Guido Tonelli, a particle physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, on the importance of creation myths, and what scientists can tell us about the fragility of the universe. Listen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the inflation reduction act, but to me it looks a lot like the Clean Energy Act. |
| 0:04.6 | It's the biggest investment in addressing climate change in the history of the country. |
| 0:09.5 | This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. |
| 0:12.0 | On this week's show, we ponder what our bodies, our planet and the cosmos have in common. |
| 0:18.3 | We can't look at climate change in isolation from everything else going on the world. |
| 0:23.3 | In equality, misinformation, new destructive weapons, |
| 0:26.7 | the modernization of our nuclear arsenals, societal fragility, writ much. |
| 0:31.0 | The only way that the scientific community can maintain or increase its credibility |
| 0:36.6 | with the public is to be honest. |
| 0:39.0 | Science tells us that there is an inner fragility in the entire universe. |
| 0:45.0 | We share the same fragility. |
| 0:47.8 | Perhaps we have passed some line that will be impossible to come back from, |
| 0:51.6 | but that hasn't happened yet. |
| 0:53.4 | Life, the universe and everything after this. |
| 1:00.5 | From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. |
| 1:05.3 | So, we're in the dog days of summer linked by ancient tradition |
| 1:09.2 | to heat, drought, thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, bad luck, |
| 1:15.2 | and death from all of the above in the Northern Hemisphere anyway. |
| 1:19.4 | And it got us thinking about the fragility of life, the universe and everything. |
| 1:24.8 | We thought we'd probe the profound and tender frailty of our minds and our planet |
| 1:30.4 | and the universe too for signs that human agency is meaningful. |
| 1:36.0 | I think maybe we found some. |
... |
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