Episode 116: Extinction
Released November 5th, 2024
Dinosaurs, mammoths, ibexes, frogs: a great deal of animals have gone the way of the dodo. Are we next? And would the world be better off without us? In Episode 116 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about extinction, from Christian eschatology, to the perils of Anthropocene, to cutting-edge de-extinction technology. They turn to animal ethics and scientific dilemmas in search of the ethical approaches that might equip us to think about the extinction of animals, and perhaps even our own. Plus, in the bonus, they talk love, cyborgs, tech bros, and the ethics of the future.
Works Discussed
Thom Van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Todd May, Should We Go Extinct?
Jacob Sherkow and Henry Greely, “What if Extinction is not Forever?”
Émile Torres, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation
Children of Men (2006) dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Episode 46. Anti-Natalism
