From the climate crisis, to the breakneck pace of technological change, to the threat of further pandemics, there’s no shortage of reasons one could find to throw up one’s hands and proclaim ‘the end is nigh’. But what’s the actual likelihood of a societal collapse? Further, what would that even look like? And, in the meantime, what’s the best way to channel the creeping feeling that the world as we know it might be coming to an end?
In Everything Is Going to Be Fine, the San Francisco-based filmmaker Ryan Malloy goes in search of answers on how he ought to prepare for the worst, and, more pressingly, how he should handle his doomsday anxieties in the meantime. Embarking on a journey that includes an interview with Ian Morris, an archaeologist and professor of Classics at Stanford University, sessions with a therapist, and time spent with ‘preppers’, Malloy’s approach is fretful yet lighthearted, ultimately landing on a note of optimism. Shot in 2011, the ideas the film explores are as relevant as ever, lending credence to the idea that widespread pessimism about humanity’s trajectory is a truly timeless feeling.
Director: Ryan Malloy
video
Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
video
Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
video
History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
video
Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
video
Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes