For The Wild

How might a bowhead whale tell the history of the Arctic? Grounding us in a history of the Bering Strait that listens deeply to ecology and the more-than-human, Bathsheba Demuth invites us to expand our future and past visions of human society in this episode. Adding nuance to our understanding of Arctic history, Bathsheba turns our attention towards the undercurrents of resistance – from whales avoiding commercial whaling ships to whalers and miners confronting the violence of the jobs into which they were forced. Bathsheba then challenges us to move beyond the logic of the slaughterhouse, wherein we are alienated from the ways our energy and goods are produced, and to instead build towards a radically imagined future of empathetic and connected relations. With this, she considers a future outside of apocalyptic visions, rooted in the understanding that the shape of the world today is neither permanent nor pre-destined. Her writing on these subjects has appeared in publications from The American Historical R