Today we travel to a future where the Earth’s magnetic poles reverse.

Guests:

• Eftyhia Zesta — Chief of the Geospace Physics Laboratory in the Heliophysics Division at NASA
• Michael Purucker — Planetary Magnetosphere Lab chief at NASA
• Alanna Mitchell — author of The Spinning Magnet
• Rory Cottrell — archaeomagnetism researcher at The University of Rochester
• Thorsten Ritz — biophysics researcher at UC Irvine

Further Reading:

• Earth’s Poles Will Eventually Flip, So What Then?
• The Magnetic Field Is Shifting. The Poles May Flip. This Could Get Bad.
• What drives 20th century polar motion?
• The Laschamp-Mono lake geomagnetic events and the extinction of Neanderthal: a causal link or a coincidence?
• Evidence for Geomagnetic Imprinting as a Homing Mechanism in Pacific Salmon
• Antiquity of the South Atlantic Anomaly and evidence for top-down control on the geodynamo
• A magnetic compass aids monarch butterfly migration
• Long-distance navigation and magnetoreception in migratory animals
• The Radical-Pair Mechanism of Magnetoreception
• Anthropogenic electromagnetic noise disrupts magnetic compass orientation in a migratory bird
• The Earth’s Magnetic Field and Visual Landmarks Steer Migratory Flight Behavior in the Nocturnal Australian Bogong Moth
• Magnetic Orientation in Animals
• The Future of the South Atlantic Anomaly and Implications for Radiation Damage in Space
• Ever-present South Atlantic Anomaly Damages Spacecraft
• Drift rate of the South Atlantic Anomaly
• The South Atlantic Anomaly throughout the solar cycle
• Cataclysmic Polarity Shift: Is U.S. National Security Prepared for the Next Geomagnetic Pole Reversal
• New Archeomagnetic Directional Records From Iron Age Southern Africa (ca. 425–1550 CE) and Implications for the South Atlantic Anomaly
• Antiquity of the South Atlantic Anomaly and evidence for top-down control on the geodynamo
• Does an anomaly in the Earth’s magnetic field portend a coming pole reversal?

Actors:

• The Snowglobe Narrator: Brent Rose
• Lenny Haywood: Evan Johnson
• Farah Mousterian: Zahra Noorbakhsh, host of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim
• John Jacob Siwa: Joseph Jones
• Juana Aguilar: Tamara Krinsky, host of Tomorrow’s World Today
• Roberta Peary: Avery Trufelman, host of Articles of Interest
• Ramona Byrd: Andrea Silenzi, host of The Longest Shortest Time

Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Hussalonia. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky. Special thanks this episode to the Women Audio Mission studios, Maryam Qudus, Stephanie Lopez, The Potluck Podcast studio, the Potluck Podcast Collective and Quincy Surasmith.

If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! And if you think you’ve spotted one of the little references I’ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you’re right, I’ll send you something cool.

And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! Head to www.flashforwardpod.com/support for more about how to give. But if that’s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.

That’s all for this future, come back next time and we’ll travel to a new one.

Flash Forward is a critically acclaimed podcast about the future.

In each episode, host Rose Eveleth takes on a possible (or not so possible) future scenario — everything from the existence of artificial wombs, to what would happen if space pirates dragged a second moon to Earth. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a black market for fecal transplants? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) By combining audio drama and deep reporting, Flash Forward gives listeners an original and unique window into the future, how likely different scenarios might be, and how to prepare for what might come.