Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of the Emerald Currants and Trans through a Mythic lens.

What can we learn from those who can read the ocean like we can read words on a page? How can we transform

how we view culture when modern Western culture likes to position itself as the top of the

cultural pyramid? What does a vision of sacred geography have to offer us? What are its

implications for planet and person? A discussion today with

anthropologist and ethnob the work of Wade Davis, you should.

Davis is a Canadian anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer, whose work has focused on worldwide indigenous cultures.

He came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book, The Serpent and the Rainbow, about the Zombies of Haiti.

He is Professor of Anthropology and the British Columbia leadership chair in cultures and

ecosystems at risk at the University of British Columbia. He's also an explorer in residence at the

National Geographic Society, which has to be one of the coolest job titles ever. I wanted to

speak with, Wade, about several topics. I've been fascinated for a very long time with the Polynesian navigators, who traveled the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean without modern navigational tools,

reading fractal patterns of waves and reflections on the undersides of clouds.

I wanted to start to understand more about the mind that can read five simultaneous sea swells,

distinguishing those caused by local weather patterns from those of the deep ocean currents.

So I asked Wade about Polynesia, and he took me on a much larger odyssey,

outlining his work for National Geographic and where it's taken him and what he's seen and observed.

...