Luxury Bunkers for the End of the World
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2019
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode April Glaser is joined by Max Read, an editor and writer at New York Magazine who writes the column Life in Pixels.
First, April and Max talk to Patri Friedman, founder of the Seasteading Institute, which he started in 2008 with seed funding from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Seasteading is the process of forming new societies on the open ocean, and it’s getting a lot of attention from Silicon Valley.
Then Robert Vicino joins the show to talk about his company, Vivos, which designs and builds high-end bunkers to help people ride out natural disasters and other potential catastrophes. Vicino talks about his clientele and the concerns that drive people to buy fancy underground apartments.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:04.4 | I'm April Glazer. |
| 0:05.7 | And I'm Max Reed. |
| 0:11.1 | Hey, everyone. Welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, |
| 0:17.1 | a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:21.7 | We're recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 28th. First of all, I just want to welcome Max Reed, |
| 0:26.9 | who is joining us for a second episode this month. Max is an editor and a writer at New York |
| 0:32.2 | magazine where he writes the column Life in Pixels. Max, so great to have you with us again. |
| 0:37.4 | Thanks so much for having |
| 0:38.1 | me, April. It's summertime, which for many means going on some kind of vacation or jumping |
| 0:43.4 | into the nearest body of water as soon as possible. And in honor of getting away from it all, |
| 0:48.2 | we're doing a special episode this week on a particular flavor of escapism, popular amongst some of the |
| 0:53.1 | most elite and powerful in Silicon Valley, |
| 0:55.6 | prepping for doomsday. First, we're joined by Patry Friedman, the founder and board chairman of the |
| 1:01.4 | Seesteading Institute. Patry has spoken widely and worked on efforts to build communities on ships |
| 1:06.8 | in international waters, where all aboard will be free from government control and free to form |
| 1:11.6 | their own libertarian societies. Friedman also had a former career as a competitive poker player |
| 1:17.1 | and used to work at Google as an engineer. Then we're talking to Robert Vsino, head of Vivas, |
| 1:22.3 | a company that builds high-end shelters to help people survive natural disasters and other |
| 1:26.5 | potential catastrophes. |
| 1:28.1 | He's got bunkers in South Dakota, Indiana, and Europe, where he offers buyers dwellings in |
| 1:32.4 | case of, as Vecino lists on his website, a giant tsunami, bio war, a killer comet, or |
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