Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Jeffrey Jerome Cullen is a scholar in the fields of medieval studies, monster theory, and the environmental humanities.

Julian Yates is professor of English studies at the University of Delaware,

and has written extensively on medieval and Renaissance British literature,

literary theory, and questions of ecology.

In this essay, Jeffrey and Julian, who co-wrote the piece,

take our present-day environmental catastrophe

as an opportunity to re-examine the myth of Noah's Ark

and the opposing narratives of survival

that are represented by the dove and the raven.

Thank you. that are represented by the dove and the raven. Abord.

The weather is about to change, portending disaster.

A family takes shelter in a well-sealed home,

having collected everything they will need to begin life anew.

Strong walls offer security against a world ravaged by meteorological calamity.

The survival of this small community is made possible only through the exclusion of those who have been left to the rising sea.

The humans and the animals they could not, or simply did not, include.

At last, the relentless storms subside. When the waters retreat, the land has been washed clean.

The family emerges to a bright new day, sealed with a rainbow,

a future they could hardly have imagined when the earth was in tumult.

...