Setting the Doomsday Clock w/John Mecklin

Journos

The news media is a pretty literal biz. It regularly reports on only two metaphors: One is what that groundhog does every February. The other is what the Doomsday Clock does every January.

The Doomsday Clock is that thing that has been ticking intermittently toward (and sometimes away from) midnight (AKA the end of the world) since it was created in 1947 by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a publication launched by Albert Einstein and some scientist chums after WWII to keep people informed on the risk of man-made apocalypse.

(The Bulletin has since added some categories, like climate change, biosecurity, and artificial intelligence.)

In January, The Bulletin set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it's been to apocalypse (per the scientists calculating such things). It's because of Russia, of course.

Who would run such a grim-sounding publication? And are they extremely emo?

In this episode, we talk to The Bulletin's editor-in-chief, John Mecklin, about the dangers of nuclear weapons, the power of metaphor, how AI complicates everything, and whether editing The Bulletin is the gloomiest job in journalism ... or the best.

Get ready for the only conversation about existential risk that asks the tough questions, like whether heaven exists as a dimension beyond time itself.

Oh yeah, we go there.

NOTES

A very short statement on AI risk // ... And The Bulletin's take on that statement // Here's OpenAI's Sam Altman talking to Congress. Can you tell if he's really asking for help ... or just trying to distract some easily confused politicians?