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The modern world is full of risks, from natural hazards such as flooding to the existential threat of nuclear war, artificial intelligence and climate change.

With the scientific and technological progress of the past few centuries, we’ve created new hazards that threaten our very survival and, in this series, emergency planner and disaster recovery expert Lucy Easthope explores the history of risk to find out how it’s understood, perceived and managed, and to ask how we can become more resilient as individuals, as a society and as a planet.

The Ancient Romans had a passion for dice and would even consult them to predict the future, but despite a love of gambling - and a life of danger - they didn’t have a theory of risk. Fate was in the hands of the gods.

With the discovery of probability during a game of chance between a French nobleman and two brilliant mathematicians in the middle of the 17th century, there was a revolution in human thought as, for the first time in history, we could calculate risk and begin to look - however dimly - into the future.

But did this give us mastery over our fate or simply the illusion of control? Is prediction an art or a science? Are the ‘superforecasters’ of today like the oracles of the past? And how much are we simply gambling with our future, playing with dice while the volcano smokes in the distance.

Lucy Easthope is the co-founder of the After Disaster Network in the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at the University of Durham, Professor in Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the University of Bath and the author of When The Dust Settles.

Presenter: Lucy Easthope
Producer: Patrick Bernard
Executive Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4