This is a rerun episode from July, which we think is still timely, because let's face it,

a lot of us are still thinking about the end of the world.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is away this week. I'm Brooke Gladstone, and our planet is weird.

Phoenix could reach 120 degrees, forcing dozens of flight cancellations because many of the regional planes simply can't fly in temperatures above 118.

The North Pole is seeing a heat wave. Scientists say it's 36 degrees warmer than normal over most of the Arctic Ocean.

Melting sea ice is behind this gathering of walruses, thousands of them, forced ashore,

facing starvation.

The weather sounds like the stuff of science fiction, as does much of what we've done to the earth,

so much so that there's a new term for our time,

the Anthropocene, the age of man. And since we'll need new words to describe our march

into the Anthropocene, we ask you to conjure some up. Ecologiac, deriving from ecology and elegiac.

The adjective for elegy, a lament for the dead.

As a naturalist, I wax ecologiac when I am taking in the beauty of migrating birds

and feel I may be seeing a treasure that myself and humanity are bound to lose.

I'm Daniel Large, and I'm from San Antonio, Texas.

In recent years, speculating on humanity's earthly impact has generated tubs

of popcorn thrills. On screen, we've had Mad Max Fury Road,

interstellar, snowpiercer, to name a few,

and on bookshelves, much more with such titles as The Book of Joan, The Bone Clocks, New York 2140,

Gold Fame Citrus, Born, Solar, the Mad Adam trilogy, as you'll hear.

Science fiction always explores our existential anxieties,

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