In the race to name this new bizarre geologic era, "Anthropocene" seems to have stuck the most. Some people are cautious to embrace a name meaning the age of humans, as it can be latched onto by industry and used as a justification for the murder of the planet. More descriptive, cautionary names have been suggested, too. Michael Soule suggested the Catastrophozoic Era. Other contenders include Homogenocene, the Age of Homogeneity, Mixocene, the Age of Slime, and the most resonant to me, coined by EO Wilson, Eremocene, the Age of Loneliness.

With the human population in explosive expansion, it is easy to forget, the Earth is going through the most rapid extinction crisis the world has ever seen. Joining us today to help us digest the great amount of information being amassed around the globe about this major juncture in Earth’s history, is Elizabeth Kolbert.

Elizabeth is a staff writer for The New Yorker, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change, and most recently The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction.

♫ Music includes is "Blood Red Moon" by Dave Van Ronk, "Davos and Denzetta" by Fred Frith, "New Myth" by Leah Ices, "Cathedrals of Fleur de Lis" by Robbie Basho and "Death Don't Have No Mercy" by John Martyn