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Short Stuff: Tick tock goes the Doomsday Clock · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and we're sitting in for Jerry, who usually sits in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: for Dave. So yeah, let's go.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Let's go.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: This is well, it's a follow up to our Doomsday
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: Clock episode. But it turns out we didn't do a
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Doomsday Clock episode. I know we talked about this, so
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: it might have been in one of when we were
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: doing videos years ago. I think it was probably in
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: one of those. But I know for a fact the
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: only reason I would have known about this is because
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: of this job and you.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: That makes me feel good that I wasn't completely unaware
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: that we had done an episode on doomsteak clocks.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it popped up in someplace. But what's the Doomstak clock?
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  Speaker 2: Josh?
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: So, the doomsday clock is a metaphorical clock that is
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: operated or overseen by the Bulletin Atomic Scientists, which was
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a group of scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: They got together and they said, we need to create
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a group that is going to basically keep an eye
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  Speaker 1: on this nuclear proliferation that's starting up. And one of
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  Speaker 1: the things they did in nineteen forty seven was create
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the doomsday clock, and it essentially is this I guess
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  Speaker 1: it's a graphic representation of how close humanity is to
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  Speaker 1: self inflicted disaster like a nuclear.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: War, perfectly said elegantly said I see, yeah, So, like
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: you said, been around since nineteen forty seven.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: They set the time every year.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: It's sort of a thing where they say, like, all right,
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: the time for this year is going to be this,
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: would they move it forward if something really went down
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: within a year?
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I think they do it every year, so.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Like in January they said it, and if like four
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: months later, like the s goes down, they wouldn't be
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: like they'd be like, nop, gota wait till next year.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I think two things would happen. Either it would
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: be something that they would take into account the next year, yes,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: or the world would end and they wouldn't have anything
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to do anyway.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, But again, we're talking about it this year because
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: there was and you know, we'll.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Talk about a little bit how it's fluctuated over the years.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: But the reason we bring it up is because this year,
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: January eighth, twenty twenty five, is when they moved the
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  Speaker 3: second hand on the clock forward to eighty nine seconds
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  Speaker 3: to midnight, yeah, which means it's the closest that clock
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: has ever been to midnight since they started.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, since they started, or when they started in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forty seven, when the US and Russia were starting the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Cold War, creating nukes, testing nukes out in the open
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: underground in space, there was seven minutes to midnight. We're
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: now less than two minutes away from midnight because stuff
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: is just so close to hitting the fan. And we
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: should say that they've actually moved the clock backward. They've
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: moved the secondhand backwards further away from midnight in the past,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and the furthest away it was from midnight was nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety one, after the Soviet Union Union dissolved. Uh huh,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it was all the way back from seventeen minutes to midnight,
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  Speaker 1: which is work.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I think.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's called teeky time.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like bust out the rum, everybody, exactly.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: We're all at seventeen minutes. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: The closest pre this time in twenty twenty five was
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  Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty three. It was two minutes before midnight,
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  Speaker 3: So we're eighty nine seconds till midnight, And the closest
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: previous was two minutes. So that's you know, it's pretty drastic.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: And again, you know, I guess we can go ahead
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: and mention. One of the criticisms of this is that
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: it's it's something that just gins up some the critics
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: will say it's something that just gins up paranoia in
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  Speaker 3: people and like pushes the panic button and.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: What is it even doing? But what is doing? I
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: think it's a.
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  Speaker 3: Valuable thing because it just raises awareness every year with people.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: It's just another thing to kind of say, hey, like
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: we're not headed in the right direction as amenity goes.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the first editor of the Bulletin of Atomic
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Scientists was Eugene Rabinowitch, and Eugene Rabinowich said that the
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  Speaker 1: purpose of the doomsday clock is to quote frighten men
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  Speaker 1: into rationality and to basically say like, hey, you know,
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  Speaker 1: this is where this stuff's out of control. People. You
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: need to be paying attention to these things, because they
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: don't just say we're eighty nine seconds from midnight. See
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  Speaker 1: you next year. They explain what the what the reasoning
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: is for moving or even not moving or moving back
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  Speaker 1: the secondhand and this year being eighty nine seconds the
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  Speaker 1: closest we've ever been. They had a whole crop of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: issues that go well beyond the nuclear risk that was
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  Speaker 1: originally the clock was originally designed to track. And I say,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: we take a break and we come back and talk
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: about why we're so close to midnight right now according
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: All right, everyone, we're back.
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  Speaker 3: We're eighty seconds to midnight, not ten minutes to midnight,
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  Speaker 3: like Charles Bunson was and that great movie.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: What was it called ten Minutes to Midnight?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you didn't see that one. No, you should check
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: that out. It's got a couple of choice scenes. It's
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: about a creepy, uh, serial killer that's he's chasing.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Oh Bronson's not the creepy serial killer. He's being chased
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: by a creepy dude.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Charles Bunsen is always the guy on the hunt for
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: the bad guy.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen Death Wish three, where like the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: group of pos has taken over the neighborhood.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all the Death Wish movies.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, the first one was genuinely pretty good, but
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: they got really sort of over the top after a while.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good though.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: It's good. You got the Death Wish pal this is
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: my favorite impression to do.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: But I can't wait till you get your Morgan Freeman down.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I don't think so.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: All right, So how do we get eighty nine seconds
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: to midnight? This comes direct from the bulletin website. Some
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: we can kind of summarize a few of these. I'm
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: just going to read outright because it's so like sort
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: of expertly put.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: But the first thing is.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: The ongoing war in Ukraine, and not just that, but
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: the nuclear risk therein involved in the third year of
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: that conflict that you know, hopefully it doesn't go that way.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Maybe things are wrapping up, but at the peak of
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: this thing, like any weird bad decision could have led
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: to something like that happening.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Same with the Middle East right now that can
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: spiral out of control and suck in nuclear powers against
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: one another. That's a nuclear risk for sure. And then
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: we're back to increasing the size of our nuclear arsenal,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: which is a reverse of what we were doing in
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties where we were getting rid of them.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: That's not a good sign. And then one other thing too,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and this is definitely new countries that hadn't had nukes
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: before were basically like, well, we're never going to have
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: nukes because that's just not the way things are. It's
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: changed geopolitically, and now countries are starting to think about
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: developing their own nuclear programs, where if you have more
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: countries with more nukes, you have that much more risk.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: Climate change is the next thing they have listed, and
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: you know, this one kind of speaks for itself.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: We don't need to beat a dead horse.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: But their take basically is that global greenhouse gas emissions
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: are still rising. No one is doing enough to combat this.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: This is bringing on extreme weather and climate changed events
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: or climate change influence events, and it's affecting people all
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: over the world. And even if we're growing things like
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: solar and wind, it's just not fast enough and not
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: nearly an enough to make a dent and the damage
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: that's being done.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Right. Also, there's the biological arena, as they put.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: It the boy, This one is very scary.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: That's the most mucisy arena.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but obviously coming out of COVID and with avian
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: the avian flu now expanding you know, to farm animals,
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: to dairy products, human cases, all this stuff is very
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: scary and the point of this episode isn't to scare
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: the cred out of everybody, but it's hard to read
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: the stuff and not get the crud scared out of
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: you sometimes.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, also, don't leave AI on the sidelines. In their
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: disruptive Technology part, they were like, like, yes, AI. They
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: didn't get into the existential threat that AI itself pose.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: They more looked at it like, hey, some militaries are
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: starting to incorporate AI in their like battlefield decision making,
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  Speaker 1: Like we're a step away from AIS deciding whether to
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: kill or not kill and then eventually giving AIS control
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: over our nuclear arsenals. That's not a direction we want
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  Speaker 1: to be going. And then the whole thing, this is
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the reason why all these things that have been around
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: for a while or have been developing for a while
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: have been accelerated to eighty nine seconds from midnight because
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  Speaker 1: of the threat multiplier of misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is the one I wanted to read
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  Speaker 3: a part or two from this because it just kind
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: of speaks volumes of things. They really put it very succinctly.
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  Speaker 3: Spread of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that degrade the
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: communication ecosystem increasingly blur the lines between truth and falsehood.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: And then they talk about AI making it even you know,
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: we've talked about deep fake video and stuff like that,
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: like making all that stuff just so much easier, And
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: then this final line is really really good. The battered
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  Speaker 3: information landscape is also producing leaders who discount science and
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: endeavor to suppress fe free speech, and human rights, compromising
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: the fact based public discussions that are required to combat
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: the enormous threats facing the world. So like, all of
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: the problems that we've been listing are bad enough, and
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: then when you've got disinformation and conspiracy theories and misinformation
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: thrown on top of that, and AI exacerbating all that,
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  Speaker 3: that's when it's like they're moving that clock as close
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: to midnight as they've ever been.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reason why is because people would be
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: under that circumstance, they're being led away from paying attention
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  Speaker 1: to the stuff the doomsday clock is warring against. And
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: that just makes it that much riskier too, because we
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: have to be paying attention to it, whether you like
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: it or not. For some reason, when I was researching
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: this today, I was like, this is striking me as
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: a little ridiculous, and like, I get the point of it,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and I think it is noble and worthy, but there's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: also some like real, I don't know, real criticisms of it.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And I found one piece by a guy named Stephen
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Johnson on Life Hacker and he interviewed Lawrence Krause, who's
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a physicist and a member of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist. Sorry,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the New Republic interviewed Kraus and he said, it's not scientific.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: It's a number that's arrived at by a group of
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: people exploring each of the questions and having a huge
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: amount of discussion and ultimately convergence on a number. That
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: number is frankly arbitrary. And that's true. You have to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: remember it's a metaphor. There's no way to measure it. Okay,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: for eighty nine seconds from midnight right now? How much
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: longer is the world going to last? And the big
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: problem with it, I think is national geographic put it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: If everything's a crisis, nothing's a crisis. So before the
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: whole thing was created to say this one thing, nuclear proliferation,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: this is what we're warning about. Now you've got climate change,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: AI avian flu information. It's just like being piled on,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and I think it's really diluted the point and the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: pointedness of the whole thing.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah maybe, but that's also the world we're living in
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it makes it so easy to just be like, oh, well,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I give up, I'm going to guess, so pay attention
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: to I don't know, flowers versus zombies. Do people play?
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Let Still, I know that was the thing. I think
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: it was at some point unless I had a fever dream.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Uh well, you didn't have a fever dream. One thing,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: whether or not you agree with the doomsday clock or not.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: One thing we can I can recommend because you're too
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: humble too. It's a little limited podcast series called The
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: End of the World with Josh Clark. That way you
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: can really learn something and take a deep dive into
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: real existential threats that face humanity.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Thanks Chuck, I appreciate that.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Holds up still great? I imagine I haven't gone back
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: and listen to it again.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I bet it still holds up though.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, because one of the number one rules and
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: show businesses leave them wanting more, I say short stuff
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: is out.
• 13:07
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