#153 Floating Coast: The Environmental History of the Bering Strait w/ Bathsheba Demuth
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2019
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1848, New England ships crossed the Bering Strait in pursuit of the bowhead whales that provided their income. In the years since, the activity of outsiders- from hunters, to government bureaucrats, to consumers of energy who never set foot in the region- has had a deep impact on the region, but the environment of Beringia has made the place itself an active participant in this process.
About a century and a half after New England whalers crossed the Bering Strait, Bathsheba Demuth graduated High School in Iowa and moved north of the Arctic Circle in the Yukon. She later earned a PhD in history, and is currently Assistant Professor of History at Brown University. In this episode, Bathsheba joins Ben for a conversation about her research, how her fascination with the arctic led her to dedicate much of her life to understanding Beringia, and the ways that an environmental perspective allows us to better understand our place in the world and that of others. Bathsheba's new book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait was published by W.W. Norton & Co in 2019. It is a masterpiece.
For more on Dr. Bathsheba Demuth, visit her website- www.brdemuth.com- and follow her on twitter at @brdemuth.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Southern Songs and Stories is a documentary series on the artists, |
| 0:04.0 | with interviews, songs, a good bit of history, and insights |
| 0:22.4 | into how all of it fits together. I'm your host, Joe Kendrick, inviting you to come explore |
| 0:27.9 | the music of the South and the artists who make it on Southern Songs and Stories. I'm Ben Sawyer, and this is the road to now. |
| 0:49.0 | Today's conversation is with Bashiba Dumuth. |
| 0:52.0 | She is a historian, assistant professor of history at Brown University, where she specializes |
| 0:58.1 | in environmental history. |
| 1:01.1 | She has just written a new book called Floating Coast, an environmental history of Beringia. |
| 1:07.7 | I'm not even going to start now because I will go on about how good this book is and you're |
| 1:11.9 | going to hear it in the conversation. Just an amazing, rare example of someone who can do the |
| 1:21.4 | insane amount of research it takes to write an academic book, but has a mastery of the word to write beautifully. I say in this |
| 1:30.6 | episode, I'm just going to say this. I'll stop now. The book reads itself. It's so good. |
| 1:36.7 | Bashiba is an old friend of mine, actually. I knew her from the days when I was in Moscow and from |
| 1:41.6 | conferences. I remember getting to know her and then she started |
| 1:46.7 | winning awards and I was like, she seems like she's good at this. This is the first time I sat down |
| 1:52.2 | and read anything substantial by her and oh my, I'm already ready for her to write another book. |
| 1:57.5 | So I don't want to get too far ahead. I'm sure if she heard that, she's like, thanks. |
| 2:01.8 | Because we never enjoy anything whenever we have these academic lives. |
| 2:05.9 | But it is fantastic. |
| 2:09.1 | Bathsheba, when she was 18 years old, she just went and lived in the Arctic. |
| 2:14.5 | And from there, she lived there for a while. |
| 2:19.8 | She came back. She went to graduate school. |
... |
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