Hi everybody, from Wundery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History.

I'm Patrick Weimann, thanks for joining me.

The Pacific is a really, really big place, but it's far from empty.

For thousands of years, people have made their homes among the large land masses and

chains of islands scattered over tens of millions of square miles of open ocean.

But how and why did this happen?

That drove people to undertake long voyages out of sight of land and make new lives in

previously unexplored places over the course of millennia of travel and migration.

To help us answer those questions, we've got a really fantastic guest today.

Patrick Vinton Kirch is professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and a

meridus professor of anthropology and integrative biology at the University of California Berkeley.

Over the course of his career, he has worked on a remarkable variety of topics related

to the peoples and places of the Pacific, everywhere from New Guinea to French Polynesia

to Hawaii.

He's the author of several books, including On the Road of the Winds, an archaeological

history of the Pacific Islands before European contact.

A shark going inland is my chief, the island civilization of ancient Hawaii.

And he edited the comprehensive volume, Tale Pakemale, La Pida and its transformations

in the Musa Islands of near Oshiani.

That is just a sampling of the huge body of work that I cannot wait to ask you about.

Professor Kirch, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you, to be here.

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