Futurology30 Sep 2025

A Cosmic Voyage Through Deep Time (with Ross Andersen and Grant Slater)

Humanity has a deep time problem. Our internal clock simply cannot compute on a time scale that takes into account the rise and fall of civilizations, star systems, and superintelligences. Unable to fathom consequences beyond our chronology, we make decisions and take actions that could snuff out our species in a blinding flash of light that would barely merit mention on the cosmic timeline. Ross Andersen writes for The Atlantic about the sublime and scary implications of deep time. In this episode, he speaks with Futurology producer Grant Slater about how our view of time itself dictates what feels urgent now. From our definition of consciousness to our search for life in the cosmos, a wider frame of reference could dictate a new organizing principle for life on our planet and beyond. SHOW NOTES Subscribe to Futurology on your favorite listening platform Apple Podcasts Spotify Youtube (Futurology Podcast playlist) Anywhere you get your podcasts Episode Resources: Follow Ross Andersen Bluesky / @rossandersen X/ @andersen Instagram @rossandersen www.theatlantic.com/author/ross-andersen/ Articles The Vanishing Groves – Ross Andersen, Aeon Magazine The Bristlecone’s Fate – Grant Slater, Aeon Magazine In the Beginning – Ross Andersen, Aeon Magazine Are We Disappointed With Space Exploration? – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic The Search for America’s Atlantis – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2021) Exodus – Ross Andersen, Aeon (2014) What Happens When AI Has Read Everything? – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2023) The Most Powerful Space Telescope Ever – Video by The Atlantic, Ross Andersen (2016) Welcome to Pleistocene Park – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2017) A Journey Into the Animal Mind – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2019) The Nuclear Club Might Soon Double – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2025) Books The Wild Trees – Book by Richard Preston Is a River Alive? – Robert Macfarlane (2025) The Three-Body Problem – Novel by Liu Cixin OtherTimeline of the Far Future – Wikipedia Will We Run Out of Data? Limits of LLM Scaling Based on Human-Generated Data – Epoch AI (2024)Want to share suggestions or feedback? Email futurology@berggruen.org Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at: https://www.berggruen.org Instagram: / berggrueninst Twitter/X: / berggrueninst Facebook: / berggrueninst LinkedIn: / berggrueninst Bluesky /futurologypod Credits Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Mixing & Mastering: Aaron Bastinelli Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Special Thanks: Heather Mason, Olivia de Rienzo, Carly Migliori, Nick Goddard Chapter Headings 0:00 – Introduction 2:12 – Bristlecone Pines and Ancient Trees 6:20 – Trees as Climate Records 9:07 – The Oldest Living Things on Earth 10:47 – The Deep Time Beat 11:38 – The Incomprehensibility of Big Numbers 13:07 – Cosmology and Cyclical Universes 15:52 – Becoming a Journalist 18:50 – Human Migration and Lost Worlds 26:27 – Pleistocene Park and Rewilding the Arctic 33:26 – Long Now Thinking and Tech Optimism 37:01 – Elon Musk, Mars, and Longtermism 42:01 – Searching for Extraterrestrial Life 47:06 – How Creative Is the Universe? 48:19 – First Contact: West and East Perspectives 55:18 – AI’s Rise and Limits 59:05 – What Happens When AI Runs Out of Text 1:05:13 – Consciousness in AI and Animals 1:13:25 – Animism, Gaia, and Personhood 1:17:30 – Nuclear Proliferation and Global Risks 1:23:49 – Linking Geopolitics to Cosmic Futures

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Episoder(56)

We Can’t Prove We’re Conscious, Let Alone AI (with Geoffrey Lee and Grant Slater)

Machines are starting to act like humans. Does that mean they’re conscious? The problem is we haven’t been able to prove how or why humans are conscious yet either. So why would we be able to offer an...

15 Okt 1h 16min

Multispecies Democracy Now! (with Jonathon Keats and Grant Slater)

Democracy counts people, not plants. Humans are only a sliver of life on this planet, but today, we're the only ones who get a vote. What if we gave rights to rivers and standing to trees? In this e...

6 Okt 1h 37min

Let AI Have Intelligence. We’ll Keep Wisdom. (with Arianna Huffington and Dawn Nakagawa)

Somewhere around the Enlightenment we decided that thinking was what made us human. We built our schools, careers, and sense of worth at the altar of intelligence. Now machines are passing us on that ...

29 Sep 1h 4min

Are We Posthuman? (with N. Katherine Hayles and Claire Webb)

Relying on machines to coordinate our lives was just one step toward decentering humanity’s role in the world. Flights, banking, trade, food production... But as we start merging our actual decision-m...

17 Sep 1h 8min

God Is In the Machine (with Kevin Kelly and Nils Gilman)

Technologists have feared (or prayed for) the singularity as a rapture-like inevitability for nearly 70 years. In an instant, they believed, our machine intelligence will overtake us and race ahead. K...

9 Sep 1h 40min

Gamble on Anything. Except Murder. (with Bobby Allyn and Grant Slater)

With prediction markets, gambling has gone ambient. To place your bets, you don't need to visit a casino floor, a racetrack, or your corner bookie. Now any uncertain thing on Earth could be the next b...

18 Aug 1h 16min

There's No Such Thing as a Free Agent (with Gillian Tett and Dawn Nakagawa)

One value proposition of AI is a personalized assistant at your fingertips. Every Average Joe can now have a “pocket pixie," the kind of perk once reserved for Hollywood stars and high-powered CEOs. B...

11 Aug 1h 7min

We're Winning the Race to Replace Ourselves (with Tristan Harris and Dawn Nakagawa)

The people racing to build artificial general intelligence tell us this rush to the future is inevitable. It reads like a forecast, but works like an alibi. If nothing can stop the race, then no one d...

4 Aug 51min