On today's episode, we get existential with Peter Ward, a paleontologist and astrobiologist who studies life on Earth – where it came from, how it ends, and what it means for us. Peter is a professor at the University of Washington and the Sprigg Institute of Geobiology at the University of Adelaide, as well as an award-winning author and adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum.

Peter delves into some of the greatest threats to human civilization – such as the melting of the ice caps, asteroids, and nuclear war – and explains why we as a species need to evolve our intelligence to find solutions to these pressing problems. He talks about mass extinction and what it might look like for our planet, the science fiction movies that come closest to predicting the future, and the prospect of life on other planets.

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