Editor at Nature Magazine and National Science Foundation public affairs officer Mitch Waldrop is a science journalist who writes in ways that everyone can understand and enjoy. He explores a wide range of topics for many prominent magazines and is the author of numerous books focused on technology and science issues. In this video, he tells the story of how our world became such a green, nurturing place for modern life -- and how weird it was along the way. Science Fiction ideas about alien planets don't even begin to capture it. The talk will illuminate the following episodes: The Age of Bombardment, Waterworld; the Purple Earth, The First (and Worst) Mass Extinction Ever; Snowball Earth, Why we're all Asgardians; the (not so) Boring Billion; Snowball Earth round 2; and the Creatures that Time Forgot.