Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on theHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

From Pushkin Industries, this is Deep Background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.

I'm Noah Feldman.

This May, the United Nations released a report based on thousands of scientific studies,

saying that a million species are at risk of extinction.

It said that humans were altering the natural world at a, quote, unprecedented pace.

This is something that Elizabeth Colbert has been reporting on for years.

She's a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning book,

The Sixth Extinction, which is all about biodiversity loss as a result of the human impact on the

environment. Elizabeth, thank you very much for being here with us.

I want to ask you about biodiversity from a range of perspectives, and I want to start with

the question of what biodiversity is.

It's a kind of catchy phrase, and we all feel bad when we hear that biodiversity is endangered.

But what do we mean when we actually say biodiversity? Well, that's a

good question. I think that in its most basic sense, you know, biodiversity refers to the variety of

life on earth and a sort of shorthand is often how many species there are on Earth.

And the fact of the matter is we don't know how many species there are on Earth.

They like to use that estimated number of 8 million, right?

Yeah.

...