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Reveal

Is AI Pushing Us Closer to Nuclear Disaster?

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.78K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Earlier this year, Daniel Holz from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its experts were moving the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight. The hands have been moved only 25 times since the clock’s creation in 1947, and they’re now the closest they’ve pointed to imminent global destruction. On this week’s More To The Story, Holz sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the history of the Doomsday Clock, why we’re closer to destruction than ever before, and what we can do to stop it. 

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson 

Listen: Weapons With Minds of Their Own (Reveal)
Learn more: NUKEMAP
Read: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Read: Why Iran’s Nuclear Program Is So Essential to Its Identity (The Guardian)

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Thank you all for being here today.

0:07.0

It is the determination of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic

0:11.5

scientists that the world has not made sufficient progress on existential risks threatening

0:19.0

all of humanity.

0:21.2

We thus move the clock forward.

0:24.6

Every second of delay in reversing course

0:27.8

increases the probability of global disaster.

0:33.2

It is now 89 seconds to midnight.

0:40.3

This is the closest the world has ever been to midnight.

0:45.3

The doomsday clock seems like something from science fiction, but it is in fact very real.

0:52.3

Coming up on more to the story, Daniel Holtz from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

0:57.0

explains why global existential threats

1:00.0

are moving us closer to midnight.

1:02.0

Stay with us.

1:08.0

Hey, this is Al, and before we start the show, I wanted to talk to you directly, just you and I.

1:15.2

Public media is under attack.

1:18.1

Each week, listeners here reveal on local public radio stations, many of which receive funding

1:23.9

from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1:26.6

The White House recently requested

1:28.1

that Congress take back $1.1 billion that had already been approved for the Corporation

1:33.7

for Public Broadcasting. This would profoundly destabilize a public service that's all about

1:39.8

reporting the truth. And I got to tell you that in the time that I have been working at Reveal,

...

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