Why are billionaires prepping for the apocalypse?
Sean Illing talks with Douglas Rushkoff about the apocalyptic mindset of Silicon Valley tech billionaires, and why the ultra-wealthy are preparing for the end times
November 10, 2022
53 min
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November 10, 2022
Why are billionaires prepping for the apocalypse?
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Gray Area Episodes Around November 10, 2022
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Why are billionaires prepping for the apocalypse?
Summary
Sean Illing talks with technologist, media theorist, and author Douglas Rushkoff, whose new book Survival of the Richest explains how the ultra-wealthy are obsessed with preparing for the end of the world — and the troubling mindset that leads many rich and powerful people down this road. They discuss the blend of tech utopianism and fatalism behind this doomsday prepping, how Silicon Valley and "tech bro" culture have incentivized a kind of misanthropy, and why the world's billionaire class can't see that the catastrophes they fear are of their own making.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff), author; professor, media studies, CUNY Queens College
References:
Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff (W.W. Norton; 2022)
"Epson boobytrapped its printers" by Cory Doctorow (Medium; Aug. 7)
"Cosmism: Russia's religion for the rocket age" by Benjamin Ramm (BBC; Apr. 20, 2021)
The Selfish Gene (1976) and The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins
Francis Bacon, Redargutio Philosophiarum (1608), tr. by Benjamin Farrington in The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (1964): "Nature must be taken by the forelock . . . lay hold of her and capture her" (p. 130).
"Power changes how the brain responds to others" by Jeremy Hogeveen, et al., Journal of Experiential Psychology (Apr. 2014)
What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill (Basic Books; 2022)
Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff (W.W. Norton; 2021)
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This episode was made by:
Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall
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