Existential Risk

The doomsday clock stands at less than two minutes to midnight, but how alarmed should we be and how can art respond to humanity's apparent vulnerability? Shahidha Bari is joined by author Sheila Heti, theatre director Omar Elerian and New Generation Thinker SJ Beard.

Sheila Heti's new novel Pure Colour, a kind of fable about end times, is published on 15th February. You can find her discussing a previous novel exploring motherhood in the Free Thinking archives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fjvg

The Chairs (Les Chaises) by Eugene Ionesco, translated and directed by Omar Elerian, runs at the Almeida Theatre, London until 5th March. First staged in post-war Paris in 1952, it features two characters, Old Man and Old Woman, who spend the play preparing chairs for a series of invisible guests coming to hear a revelation which could be the meaning of life, or could be about the end of the world.

SJ Beard is Academic Programme Manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share academic research on the radio. You can find their Essay about AI and what we learn from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vz70d

Producer: Torquil MacLeod