The End of Everything (The Takeaway)

All week long, in partnership with our friends at Scientific American, we’ve been talking about "the end" on The Takeaway. The end of the world, the end of our own lives, or, today, the end of things that we could do without. From Daylight-Saving time to the Space Shuttle, landfills to human drivers, we talk to Scientific American editor Michael Moyer about an eclectic mix of things that the world — and humans — might be better off without. What do you think? What are some of the things we'd be better off without?

All this week, we've been talking with our friends from Scientific American about endings — how cultures fade, and natural resources dwindle. Today, we’re focusing on something even bigger: the end of human life as we know it — in other words, the apocalypse. The question of course, is how will it happen? Nuclear war? a killer virus, or perhaps an environmental disaster? John Matson, online news reporter for Scientific American, has been talking with specialists from a wide range of scientific backgrounds about the end of the world, for a story called "Laying odds on the apocalypse." Together, they’ve placed odds on a variety of doomsday scenarios. He speaks with us about what they found.

All this week we’re talking with our friends from Scientific American about endings: in nature, culture and science. For most of human history the clearest, most black and white ending in our lives was death. However, in recent decades, life support technology has made death a gray area, leading to right-to-life debates, as in the case of Terri Schiavo. But the question of when someone is dead becomes especially important when dealing with the process of organ donation. We asked you, our listeners: If you are are an organ donor, what made you agree to it? If not, what's your reason against it? Let us know in the comments or call 877-8-MY-TAKE and we'll play the responses on the air. In most donation cases doctors have a clear decision. If a patient is brain-dead, one can ethically harvest their organs after withdrawing life support. But, in the few cases where brain activity still exists, doctors have an agreed-upon set of ethics rules to refer to. Once the patient is taken off the ventilator and the heart stops beating, doctors wait for two minutes before declaring death. It is a situation in which every second counts; the sooner the organs are harvested, the better the chance of the donor recipient surviving. Some doctors are now pushing against that two minute boundary. Robin Marantz Henig writes about these life and death decisions in her Scientific American article, "When Does Life Belong to the Living?"  She writes that in the midst of this discussion, "the definition of death becomes a matter of giving one diminishing life the possibility of a second chance, by defining another diminishing life as already and irreparably over." Dr. Bill Pietra faces this decision of when to declare the end of life. He is a pediatric heart transplant surgeon at Denver Children's Hospital. The group with the highest waiting list for new organs is infants, and Pietra understands ethicists' concerns. He says that many people forget that there is also a psychological need for the families of dying children to be able to save someone else's life as they watch their babies pass away.

All week long, in partnership with our friends at Scientific American, we’re talking about "the end" on The Takeaway. Whether it’s melting glaciers, the falling water table, or even how the world itself will end, we’re exploring our fascination with endings. Today, we examine the stunning evidence of how Western civilization is changing and, in some cases, eliminating indigenous cultures. Half of the world’s 7,000 languages are endangered, and when language dies, whole cultures can disappear. Vital, ancient wisdom can be lost. So we ask you: What traditions or wisdom do you think is worth saving? And what do you do to preserve them? Joining us is Wade Davis, explorer in residence for the National Geographic society. He’s spent years chronicling the lives of far-flung peoples.

Is it the end of the world as we know it? This year, we’ve seen terrible flooding, glaciers melting, and deep oil wells breaking. In light of these catastrophic events, we're launching a series this week about whether our modern age is coming to an end along with our friends at Scientific American. For the first installment of the series, we talk with Michael Moyer, staff editor for Scientific American, about the world's dwindling resources. He recently wrote about this in his article, "How Much is Left?"