The ocean is a place of queer possibility

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In each essay in their debut collection, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, science writer Sabrina Imbler shares the story of an undersea organism and a story of their own journey as someone who, as they put it, came out twice in adulthood. In one essay, they reflect on how a shape-shifting cephalopod helped them navigate their own questions about gender. In another, they celebrate queer dance clubs through the lens of the Yeti crab, a creature who “dances to live” in the crushing conditions around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. “I really wanted to sort of take these creatures very seriously… to think about both of us as organisms,” said Sabrina. “The creature’s existence in the world, and also the ways in which I am just, at the end of the day, another organism moving through the world, trying to eat and mate and survive.” Outside/In host Nate Hegyi and producer Justine Paradis sat down with Sabrina Imbler to talk about their blend of science and personal writing, and about what we might be able to learn by looking closely at the lives—perhaps very different, very strange-to-us lives—of creatures in the sea. Donate to support the show, and to get your hands on a limited edition Outside/In opossum camp mug! Here's the link: https://bit.ly/3PvIzWy MORE OUTSIDE/IN Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook LINKS Find How Far the Light Reaches at your local bookstore Sabrina Imbler’s articles on Defector Media Read “We Swarm” on The Rumpus “It’s always ourselves we find in the sea” is a line from this poem by E.E. Cummings. CREDITS Hosted by Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Felix Poon Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music in this episode by Loving Caliber, Autohacker, Valante, Silver Maple, Moon Crater, and So Vea. Theme music: Breakmaster Cylinder Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is outside in, I'm Nate Hegey.
0:02.8	Sabrina Imblur is on The Creature Beat.
0:07.5	Sabrina is a writer and science journalist, and the reporting about nature and creatures
0:11.9	is for lack of a better word, fun, with titles like This Ancient Wombat was an absolute
0:19.1	unit, and how many ants is the right number of ants for there to be?
0:24.5	And one more, how I learned to stop worrying about their many tiny legs and love the house
0:29.2	in a pit.
0:30.8	Sabrina also writes about creatures of the sea, blue whales and octopuses, but often creatures
0:37.1	not quite as well known, like marine worms and gelatinous blobs called sals.
0:43.6	I think that a lot of the ways that we write about sea creatures and other animals that
0:48.2	we find strange is to really just describe their appearance and how it diverges from
0:52.8	our own or how bizarre or like weird or uncomfortable, like something that looks like
0:59.0	a blob that is also alive, like makes us feel, and I really wanted to take these creatures
1:05.4	like very seriously and to try to understand the questions about them that I would want
1:10.2	to know of other people, right, like how do they move, how do they eat, like how do they
1:14.4	spend their lives?
1:16.4	In their new book How Far the Light Reaches, a life in ten sea creatures, Sabrina shares
1:21.2	a collection of essays, each weaving a story of an undersea organism and a story of their
1:26.8	own journey, as a person who, as they put it, came out twice in their adult life.
1:32.3	In one essay, they explore how a shape-shifting cephalopod helped them navigate questions
1:36.3	about their own gender.
1:37.7	In another, they celebrate their love of queer danceclubs through the lens of the Yeti
	...

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