First hour: The end of the human race?
Second hour: Benefits of nurse-family partnerships; the steadfast relevance of Shakespeare
In our first hour, are human beings about to unleash a scientific nightmare? Right now, researchers are trying to create artificial superintelligence. It's a kind of machine that is more intelligent than a human being. But imagine a machine that's one thousand times smarter than the smartest human. Would that machine continue to carry out programmed tasks, or could that machine gain autonomy? Would we have something to fear if it did? Author James Barrat believes ASI is the great risk to our future, and he explains why he wrote the book Our Final Invention.
In our second hour, a new study finds that nurse-family partnerships can save lives of both mothers and their first-born children living in the roughest parts of cities. We'll explore how.
Then we ask: is Shakespeare still relevant? Well, of course he is. And that's largely thanks to the passionate work of performers like Bill Alden, an actor who is a veteran of the stage. He brings the power of Shakespeare to our studio (and he might have his own conspiracy theories as to the nature of the bard).