OCEAN WANTS: 05 Translating Whales feat. David Gruber

Five hundred million years ago the ocean was dominated by jellyfish. Thanks to us, humans, they might dominate the ocean again.In the third episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to Lisa-ann Gershwin, a marine biologist with a unique dedication and enthusiasm for jellyfish. She speaks from her home in Tasmania.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

For the past 7000 years, humans have stabilized the global climate. The greenhouse gases emitted through deforestation, agriculture, and husbandry prevented the onset of a new glaciation. Only since the industrial revolution has human influence gotten out of hand, causing rapid rises in temperature and sea level.In the seventh episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to William Ruddiman, geologist and originator of the early Anthropocene hypothesis. He speaks from his home in Virginia.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

We celebrate coral reefs as the colorful rain forests of the ocean. How could we not just save and restore existing coral reefs but allow them to spread?In the first episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to Marah J. Hardt, marine biologist, storyteller and director of discovery at the non-profit Future of Fish. She speaks from her home in Hawaii.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

We can see stars thousands of light years away with our naked eye. About life in the deep sea we started to know only 200 years ago—and we still know very little. How do we have to reinvent ourselves to serve the needs of the deep sea and tame endeavors to exploit its habitats?In the ninth episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to Diva Amon, a marine biologist focused on the deep ocean. She is also a founder and director of SpeSeas, an NGO dedicated to marine science, education, and advocacy in Trinidad and Tobago. She speaks from her family home in Trinidad.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

Before fish and other vertebrates proliferated, it was the heyday of the cephalopods. Their descendants — squid, cuttlefish, octopus, and nautilus—are still around, coping better with human dominance than many fish.In the fourth episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to Danna Staaf, a trained marine biologist who wrote the history of the cephalopods. She speaks from her home in San Jose, California.

Fish are compassionate, recognize themselves in the mirror, and fancy designed shelters over natural ones. Recent experiments contest common ideas of what distinguishes humans from smaller, non-mammalian creatures of the sea.In the second episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to Alex Jordan, Principal Investigator at the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute in Konstanz, Germany. We speak at this home near Lake Constance.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

The ocean refuses empathetic ethics based on sameness with us humans. What does the urge to save nature—in certain ways—reveal about us and our desire?In the sixth episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to Eva Hayward, historian of science and faculty member in the Department of Gender and Women Studies at the University of Arizona.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

While the land is ruled by nations and super nations, the ocean is subject to the tragedy of the commons. What if the ocean turned into a nation of its own—the largest nation in the world?In the tenth episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to Markus Reymann, director of TBA21-Academy and its Ocean Space in Venice. We speak at his office in Madrid.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

To know what other humans want, we can ask them. But pets aside, modern societies lost the confidence and interest in communicating with nonhumans. Could advanced machine learning allow for an interspecies conversation, even with creatures that spend most of their time away in the deep?In the fifth episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to David Gruber, marine biologist and leader of CETI, a multidisciplinary project on understanding the acoustic communication of sperm whales. He speaks from his home in New York.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org

Shouldn’t the reduction of suffering be our priority when taking care of others’ needs—particularly the needs of those we can’t ask? Soon, CRISPR edited gene drives could alter the pain perception and hedonic range of any sexually reproducing species.In the eighth episode of the podcast Ocean Wants, speculative writer Ingo Niermann, most recently of the book Mare Amoris, is talking to David Pearce, a transhumanist philosopher who advocates the abolition of all negative feelings. He speaks from his home in Brighton, UK.— Ocean Wants, Institut Art Gender Nature dertank.ch and TBA21–Academy, ocean-archive.org