I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First.

The other day, I met a guy with a very unusual list.

I've been keeping a notepad, a tally of ways the world could end.

It has 141 entries so far.

Should we be worried?

This is Ben Bradford, host of a new podcast called Are We Dumed?

Ben's show explores the biggest risks society, the planet, and our species are facing.

There are so many things that could take humanity out. Nuclear war, climate change, pandemics,

maybe AI, and the less immediately worrisome,

your super volcanoes, aliens, or something called gray goo. And it helps listeners figure out

which future dooms are actually worth worrying about and how we might survive whatever is coming

our way. The post-apocalypse, it turns out, is almost certainly a group project.

Today on the Sunday story, is the world ending, or does it just feel that way?

Stay with us. We're back with the Sunday story.

Today I'm talking to Ben Bradford, host of the new podcast from the NPR network called Are We doomed?

Ben, welcome to the Sunday story.

Great to be here.

So why did you start making that list of doomsday scenarios?

And I mean, how did you even begin to answer that question like, are we doomed?

Yeah.

I had been a business reporter and energy environment reporter, a politics reporter, and I think that those things together start making you wonder if you're doomed.

And then over the last several years, I was covering political history and division and polarization and what shaped where we are.

...