Ted Turner was by no means one to melt a forecast, even when the topic was himself.
“At 75, how much longer will I live? Till 80 maybe?” the NCS founder informed Fortune‘s Pattie Sellers in a wide-ranging 2013 interview marking his 75th birthday. When Sellers pushed back—why not 90?—Turner allowed it was “a possibility,” but said he was “talking about practically.” It was, he explained, why he wouldn’t begin something new: “75 is too late to be starting new ventures. Particularly ones that take many years to reach fruition. I wouldn’t want to start anything without having a reasonable chance of seeing it be successful before I die or am incapacitated.”
Turner died Wednesday at 87, in keeping with a press release from Turner Enterprises—practically a decade previous the deadline he’d given himself, and simply shy of the milestone he’d half-dismissed.
He spent these bonus years a lot as he’d spent the decade earlier than: warning anybody who would pay attention that humanity was working out of time. The man who constructed the first 24-hour information community, who put $1 billion into the United Nations Foundation, who created an eco-focused Saturday morning cartoon referred to as Captain Planet, and who co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with former Senator Sam Nunn, used his late-life platform to sound an unrelenting alarm about nuclear weapons, local weather change, and overpopulation.
(*5*) he believed the possibilities have been “50-50 that humanity will be extinct in 50 years.” A decade later, sitting in his Atlanta workplace with a freshly put in pacemaker, he wasn’t backing off. “Fifty years aren’t up yet,” he informed Sellers. “I’d say that’s generally the case. The nuclear threat is the most imminent threat. But global climate change and environmental destruction of the earth and our resource base, that’s the other great threat.”
His prescription for the inhabitants drawback was characteristically Turner: blunt and barely impolitic, however unimaginable to disregard. He wished the world to drop from [then] roughly 7 billion folks to 2.5 billion, achieved voluntarily by household planning. He informed Sellers he had inspired his personal 5 youngsters—and 13 grandchildren—to have fewer children of their very own.
On religion, he was equally direct. Turner had drifted from the Christianity of his youth after watching his sister Mary Jean endure and die at 17. By 75, he referred to as himself agnostic, although he nonetheless supplied up what he referred to as “mini-prayers” for sick associates. “If God’s going to save us, it’s time for him to show up,” he informed Fortune. “We’re not showing evidence that we’re ready to save ourselves. That’s what bothers me.”
Turner’s media legacy
The 2013 interview additionally captured Turner taking inventory of his media legacy with the candor of a person who figured he didn’t have time to be diplomatic. He referred to as the AOL-Time Warner merger an outright “disaster” (he misplaced $8 billion when the inventory plummeted), lamented the deliberate spin-off of Time Inc., and predicted that Time Warner, with out him, had been shortsighted in comparison with Rupert Murdoch, who had held on to his sports activities and information properties. “They might as well rename it Turner Broadcasting,” he stated of what was left.
His verdict on Murdoch himself? The identical one he’d delivered to Fortune a decade earlier: “the most dangerous man in the world.” Then, virtually as an afterthought: “But he’s getting too old.” Murdoch, now 95, outlived him.
Asked in 2013 what he was proudest of, Turner named his youngsters first and NCS second—although he famous, with a flicker of the previous showman, that the Cartoon Network truly beat NCS in the rankings most days. “We like to laugh,” he stated. “If you get people laughing, there’s a good chance you’ll win them over. Very seldom do people kill somebody when they’re laughing. And there’s plenty of killing going on now.”
He by no means did begin that subsequent large enterprise. He caught with what he had: 2 million acres, 55,000 bison, a restaurant chain referred to as Ted’s Montana Grill, and philanthropy. By the time of the 2013 interview, he had paid $973 million of the $1 billion he’d pledged to the U.N. He stored funding the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and stored shopping for photo voltaic.
The five-year horizon he’d given himself in 2013 got here and went. So did 80. So did 85. The warnings stored coming.
Read Fortune‘s full 2013 interview with Ted Turner right here: Ted Turner at 75
For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a analysis software. An editor verified the accuracy of the info earlier than publishing.