In a world of torrential storms and rising sea levels, what can we learn from the ancient and enduring story of Noah's ark? In this episode, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates talk about their wittily-titled book Noah's Arkive. Animals going in two by two (or in some cases fourteen by fourteen), the raven, the dove, the rainbow, the curse upon Ham, above all the ark itself as a place of shelter and safety for some, but exclusion and exposure for others: these are ideas and images that hav...

In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University, presenter Jonathan Bate is in conversation with CHamoru poet, critic, environmentalist and activist Craig Santos Perez (X: @craigsperez). They talk about the history of his native island of Guam in the Pacific -- from Spanish colonial outpost to American military base and tourist destination. Listen for an array of fascinating, often tragic stories: how indigenous language was extirpa...

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 Melv...

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 Cleop...

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 o...