Habitations: The Sage Magazine Netcast

New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert discusses her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History." The book explores the five major mass extinction events that have occurred on the Earth over the last half billion years. Kolbert contrasts these prior mass extinctions with the sixth major mass extinction event, which we are in the midst of today. This time, instead of an asteroid of a sudden glaciation event, humans are the culprit.

Abrahm Lustgarten, a senior investigative reporter at ProPublica, discusses his reporting on the drought crisis in the western United States, and on the safety risks of fracking for natural gas. He also talks about the corporate culture within BP that led up to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the subject of his 2012 book called 'Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.' He compares the culture within BP that led up to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy with the culture he sees across the drilling industry now.

Mary Evelyn Tucker, a scholar of Confucianism and senior lecturer on ecology and religion at the Yale School of Forestry and Yale Divinity School, describes the importance of values and ethics in the environmental arena. She discusses the role that wonder and awe can play in bringing scientists and the religious community into dialogue.

Biologist and writer David Haskell discusses the stunning perceptual differences between moth tongues and fungal hyphae, why human productions like golf balls are "not stains imposed on nature," and other thoughts from his 2013 Pulitzer Prize Finalist book, The Forest Unseen.