The project “Vital Challenges for a New Era 2026. Geopolitics of Change. Power, Technology and Society”, which the Royal European Academy of Doctors (READ) and the Pro Royal European Academy of Doctors Foundation presented on 5 June in the Chapter Hall of Toledo City Council במסגרת the Royal Corporation’s National Congress, was featured on 24 June on the programme “JAL’s Laboratory” broadcast by Spanish National Radio. Conceived as a comprehensive, multidisciplinary study of current issues analysed with scientific rigour, Vital Challenges is now in its sixth edition and includes an extensive monograph that brings together the contributions of academicians and experts of great international scientific prestige.
On this occasion, the project focuses on the emergence of a new multipolar order and the rise of artificial intelligence, together with the ethical, social and ecological challenges associated with this new era, from an integrative and forward-looking perspective, with the aim not merely of interpreting the present, but of guiding the future with responsibility, knowledge and awareness. “The Vital Challenges 2026 collection, promoted by the Royal European Academy of Doctors, starts from a very simple and timely idea: we are living through a change of era; we are not merely witnessing a chain of crises and technical innovations, but a profound transformation in how power is organised, how technology advances and how life in society is shaped,” begins the programme’s presenter, science communicator José Antonio López Guerrero (JAL), Professor of Microbiology at the Autonomous University of Madrid and researcher at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre.
This episode of “JAL’s Laboratory,” a benchmark for science broadcasting on Spanish radio that airs weekly, explains how the Royal Academy’s most ambitious project seeks to provide rigorous, concrete, and practical responses to the great challenges facing contemporary society, combining scientific, humanistic, technological, and geopolitical perspectives. In this case, it explains how Vital Challenges has focused on topics such as the transformation of global power, the implications of artificial intelligence in various fields, from knowledge to law and sustainability, food and climate sovereignty, health and ageing in the age of longevity, and the reconfiguration of Europe’s role in an uncertain international context.
López Guerrero particularly highlights the project’s comprehensive, innovative and future-oriented vision, as well as the leading figures contributing to its contents, pointing out that, beyond the specific contributions of the experts, Vital Challenges 2026 invites anyone who engages with this edition to think for themselves about the major changes that will define the coming decades. It also, he adds, invites reflection on Europe’s role as an emblem of humanism. “Perhaps the most valuable thing about Vital Challenges 2026 is that it invites us to pause, to organise our ideas and to think more deeply about where we are heading in a time dominated by immediacy and noise. A proposal like this has real outreach and civic value: bringing expert knowledge closer to society, connecting reflection and citizenship, and opening a more conscious, more nuanced and more human public conversation about the future we are building together,” JAL concludes.
