December 21, 2012 was just the latest of many days we've held our breath for the apocalypse. Why are humans obsessed with the idea of the world ending, though these predictions keep proving false?
Novelist Karen Thompson Walker talks with Think host Krys Boyd at 1 p.m. about our doomsday fascination. Her New York Times bestseller The Age of Miracles: A Novel is now out on paperback.
The Scientific American put out a special issue on the apocalypse in 2010 exploring this widely held fixation. In this introduction, Michael Moyer suggests our pattern-seeking nature and desire to shield ourselves from anxiety about events outside our control – like our own inevitable private deaths - are partly responsible. Also, he writes, we humans tend to hold ourselves at the center of the universe, which makes our story and its end so urgently important.
Listen to Think from noon to 2 p.m., Monday through Thursday, on KERA 90.1 or stream the show at kera.org.