Life Without Podcast
Hosted by Alan Davies, Life Without looks at what would happen to our planet if we removed one thing. Could pulling a single thread from our world really unravel the whole thing?
What if, one day, something essential to our world suddenly vanished? No warning. No explanation. Just gone. What happens next?
Life Without is a roundtable-style podcast that explores this fascinating and thought-provoking question with insight, evidence-based assumptions and a range of perspectives. Hosted by Alan Davies, each episode brings together 2 guests, scientists, psychologists, economists, sociologists and journalists to discuss the unexpected consequences of losing something vital to our world.
Each episode starts with a bold, imaginative question: What would happen if something fundamental—like the moon, salt, sleep, or even something as random as rats—suddenly disappeared from the world? What's the immediate fallout? How does society cope? And how long would it take before things started unravelling?
Episodes to download
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Life Without Writing
Last Friday
How many of us even use a pen these days and what if we never picked one up ever again?
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Life Without Worms
Fri 27 Feb 2026
They wriggle and writhe in the earth beneath us, surely, we’d be fine if they vanished?
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Life Without Rats
Fri 20 Feb 2026
Surely a world without the rodents we look to exterminate anyway would be fine?
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Life Without the Moon
Fri 13 Feb 2026
Full moon, half-moon, total eclipse. What happens when we look up and the moon is missing?
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Introducing... Life Without
Fri 6 Feb 2026
Alan Davies hosts a thought experiment: will removing one thing from our world destroy it?
