How To Avoid The End of the World

Throughline revisits a story from the recent past about how scientists came to understand what drove the dinosaurs to extinction, and asks what that discovery can teach about avoiding a similar end. The episode connects that history to current reminders of life's fragility, including climate change, nuclear weapons, and AI. Guests include historian of science David Sepkoski, atmospheric scientist Owen Brian Toon, biographer Alec Nevala-Lee, Cosmos co-creator Ann Druyan, and journalist Andrew Revkin. The conversation explores how the study of extinction reshaped the way people think about catastrophic risk on a planetary scale.