Can Other Planets Tell Us Our Fate?

The universe should be crawling with life. With hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and hundreds of billions of galaxies, at least someone must have gotten a few billion years’ head start on us. So where is everybody?

This is the Fermi Paradox. And the simplest solution may be that intelligent life is common, but civilizations always destroy themselves before they get very far. And so will we.

But that’s not the only answer…

With the help of some ants, and a planet named Steve, Ben Bradford takes on the mystery of an apparently empty universe.

Guests:

Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

Michael Travisano, evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota

Sara Seager, astrophysicist at MIT

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