Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. You are about to hear the third episode in our three-part series on the economics of whaling, which we first published in 2023. We will also publish a bonus episode featuring a conversation with a Norwegian whaler about what it's like to hunt whales today. We have updated facts and figures

when necessary. As always, thanks for listening.

How many times have you read Moby Dick?

50 is probably reasonable. I'm 50 years old. I read Moby Dick for the first time at the age of 17.

What was your impression on your first reading at 17 years old? Well, that was the launch event of really my whole life. Your life, not just your academic career, your life. It's pretty central to my life. I mean, I have a tattoo of a historic

harpoon on my arm. It's pretty, it's been pretty formative. Part of that was out of the kind of

perversity of the kid who wanted to love the book that all of my classmates were groaning about

having to read. I could not believe the book. If it were not for Moby Dick, whaling would

be one of a series of interest, but because Moby Dick has loomed so large. You went all in on

whaling then, huh? It's, yeah, it's impossible to escape. Hester Blum is a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

Her specialty is oceanic and polar literature, including the writings of Arctic explorers.

But she reserves her fiercest attention for Herman Melville.

Melville was descended from relatively well-off and well-named families on both sides,

but his father failed in business when Herman was young.

And he had to go to work.

And so he had worked as a schoolteacher.

He worked in a bank for a while.

And like many young men in the Middle Atlantic or in New England, he went to sea. He spent about

three or four years total on whaling ships, although he continually deserted them. Melville spent

the rest of his life writing poems, stories, and novels. In 1851, he published a novel called

The Whale, later retitled Moby Dick, or The Whale.

At some point, you may have read Moby Dick, or pretended to.

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