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www.spictator.com.com.com.com. Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor

of The Spectator, and this week I'm joined by the philosopher Toby Ord, whose book, just out in paperback

now, is The Precipice, existential riskential Risk and the Future of Humanity, a cheering

subject. Toby, can you start by saying what you mean by the precipice? What's that term

describing? Sure. Fundamentally, this is a book about humanity and about humanity over

deep time.

The 10,000 generations who've come before us, the tens of thousands or more generations

who might come after us, and about how we live at a really critical moment right now that

could shape that entire future.

So over all of these generations that came before us,

we've been subject to natural risks,

which could cause famine or pestilence,

and could cause great problems for the people at those times.

But there was also a chance that we could suffer catastrophes so great

that they could lead to our extinction,

as, for example, the dinosaurs went extinct before us, and 99.9% of all species that have ever

...