Welcome to The Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast.  Great to be with you today on a beautiful spring day…not a cloud in the sky…birds chirping…just perfect outside…but, is it?

It isn’t, because the world’s insect population is in decline — and that’s bad news for humans.

Our guest today is science and environment author Oliver Milman.  Oliver Milman will join us in a moment to discuss his new book, Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World, and Oliver Milman will tell us about his devastating examination of how collapsing insect populations worldwide threaten everything from wild birds to the food on our plate.

From ants scurrying under leaf litter to bees able to fly higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, insects are everywhere. Three out of every four of our planet’s known animal species are insects. In The Insect Crisis, acclaimed journalist Oliver Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world?  Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it?

That of course is our guest today, author and science writer Oliver Milman reading from his new book, Insect Crisis, and we’ll answer questions about insects as pests, they’re not, the full scope of this insect loss, what the loss of pollinators means, and a portrait of a crisis that threatens to upend the workings of our collective history. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, The Insect Crisis is a wake-up call for us all.

Please join me in welcoming to The Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast, science and environment best-selling author Oliver Milman.

My thanks to science and environment best-selling author Oliver Milman, author of the new best-selling book The Insect Crisis.  My thanks to you, my wonderful Not Old Better Show audience on radio and podcast.  Please check out our website at NotOld-Better.com for all our archives, show notes and great resources.  Have a great week and remember, let’s talk about better…The Not Old Better Show.  Thanks, everybody.