Tracy Mumford

If you'd like to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around.

It is just after these credits.

This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.

Original theme by Dan Powell.

Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Miles McKinley, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann.

Now, time for the quiz.

I've got a few questions for you about stories The Times has been covering.

Can you get them all?

Every year since 1947, a group of scientists has updated what it calls the Doomsday Clock.

The symbolic timepiece, which critics have called a bit of a stunt, is designed as a way to highlight the potentially apocalyptic risks of man-made disasters like nuclear war.

They moved it to T minus 85 seconds.

That's the closest point ever to humans wiping ourselves out.

But the clock doesn't always tick forward.

It's actually gone back and forth over the last 70-plus years.

So your question, in what decade was it farthest from midnight?

Essentially, when, according to the clock, was the world the safest?

The answer?

The early 1990s, when the Soviet Union was fading and had just signed a major arms control treaty with the U.S., which really tamped down fears of a nuclear showdown.

Since then, it's basically just been ticking closer and closer to doom.

And the next question.