In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University, presenter Jonathan Bate is in conversation with maritime voyager, historian and literary scholar Richard J. King. They talk about lobsters, cormorants (why was this bird associated with the devil?), whales, coral, frigatebirds, walruses and why people are moved to sail the oceans alone -- and then write books about the experience. Above all, they share their enthusiasm for Herman Melville's maritime masterpiece Moby-Dick and ask how a book about killing whales might actually be a proto-ecological text.

You can follow Jonathan on Twitter/X here.
For more on ASU's Blue Humanities Initiative, follow this link.
New episodes featuring leading scholars will be uploaded regularly.
This episode was edited by Dave Waugh at Scrubcast.
Music: from Claude Debussy, La Mer (rights-free recording).

How do the oceans work? And how have they influenced human history? In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University, Jonathan Bate interview Helen Czerski - Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University College London, presenter of TV science documentaries, and author of Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes our World (subtitle of US edition: How the Ocean Works). Listen for an array of fascinating stories: why did Antony and Cleopatra lose the world-changing battle of Actium that heralded the rise of the Roman empire? What does the earwax of whales tell us about their stress levels during the Second World War? How do you build a ship to withstand the crushing weight of ice in the Arctic?

You can listen to Helen's Ocean Matters podcast here and follow her on any of these platforms:
Mastodon: @helenczerski@fediscience.org
BlueSky: @helenczerski.bsky.social
Instagram: helen_czerski https://www.instagram.com/helen_czerski/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-czerski-045b956/
Threads: @helen_czerski

You can follow Jonathan on Twitter/X here.
For more on ASU's Blue Humanities Initiative, follow this link.
New episodes featuring leading scholars will be uploaded regularly.
This episode was edited by Dave Waugh at Scrubcast.
Music: from Claude Debussy, La Mer (rights-free recording).

From Homer's Odyssey to Shakespeare's tempestuous late plays to Melville's Moby Dick to recent writings by authors immersed in the Indian and Pacific oceans, literature has again and again gone down to the sea, to - in the words of poet John Masefield - "the lonely sea and the sky." But what can this vast body of watery wisdom teach us in times of environmental crisis and fragile oceanic ecosystems? That's the question asked by the emerging field of Blue Humanities. In the inaugural episode of the Blue Humanities podcast of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University, Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities Sir Jonathan Bate goes to the Connecticut shoreline and interviews Professor Steve Mentz of St John's University, New York, who is often credited as the inventor of the term.

You can follow Jonathan on Twitter/X here.
For more on ASU's Blue Humanities Initiative, follow this link.
New episodes featuring leading scholars will be uploaded regularly.
This episode was edited by Dave Waugh at Scrubcast.
Music: from Claude Debussy, La Mer (rights-free recording).