Welcome to Carpathia, a podcast about saving what’s left.

Carpathia explores the fragility of life on Earth, global catastrophic risk, and existential risk to humanity. The mission of Carpathia is to raise awareness about the many threats facing humanity, while highlighting the people and organizations working on solutions to save the world. As we build solutions to save humanity — and all life on Earth — from an uncertain fate, we are building our own Carpathia. 

What are global catastrophic risks? 

A global catastrophic risk is an event that could cause an irreversible collapse of human civilization. Existential risks are the most extreme category of global catastrophic risk that result in the most severe consequence: human extinction. Global catastrophic risks include:

• Human-caused environmental threats — ecosystem instability due to climate change, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, and pandemics.

• Human-caused technological threats — nuclear war, bioterrorism, and artificial intelligence.

• Natural and cosmic risks — asteroid or comet impacts, super volcanoes, lethal gamma-ray bursts, and geomagnetic storms.

Why is it called Carpathia?

At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, an iceberg was spotted immediately ahead of the RMS Titanic. Less than three hours later, at 2:20 a.m.,  the “unsinkable” ocean liner sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The RMS Carpathia had received Titanic’s distress call and navigated dangerous ice fields to come to the rescue. In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, RMS Carpathia pulled 705 survivors from the life boats left behind by RMS Titanic. 

The RMS Carpathia was named after the Carpathian Mountain Range, which is speculated to have originated from an Old English word meaning “to turn or change,” perhaps referring to the way the mountain range bends. This symbolizes our species changing, adapting, and evolving in order to survive.