Life was filled with guns and war and everyone got trampled on the floor.

I wish we'd all been ready. Children died. The days grew cold. A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold.

I wish we'd all been ready.

There's no time to change your mind.

The sun has come and you've been left behind. Welcome to Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor in Chief of current affairs magazine. And my guest today is Phil Torres.

He is a scholar of, wait, what did you say before the program? Human global catastrophic risk.

Global catastrophic risk. Global catastrophic risk. Existential threats to civilization and humanity.

Scholar of existential threats to civilization and humanity is someone that I have wanted to talk to

for a very long time. He's been a contributor to current affairs before. One of my favorite thinkers,

I try and read everything he writes. Phil Torres, thank you so much for joining me.

Yeah, it's great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Really appreciate it.

In case people don't know, you have written a number of books, all of which are on the subject of, well, the end times or human extinction or, as you say, global, cladistrophic risks.

You've written morality, foresight, and human flourishing, an introduction to existential risks.

The End, what science and religion tell us about the apocalypse?

And your forthcoming book is Human Extinction, a history of thinking about the end of the world. But in addition to

your work on the sort of giant risks facing humanity, you've also become known as a critic of certain

tendencies in certain intellectual currents that are kind of related to what you do.

You've sort of criticized a lot of those who are prominent in thinking about what is called

existential or catastrophic risks and a lot of the, what we might call the rationalist movement and the new

atheist movement. You had a prominent article in Salon last year about the so-called new

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