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1 Love Is Blind S8: Pods & Sober High Thoughts w/ Courtney Revolution & Meg 1:06:00
Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, "Sea Level: A History" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Manage episode 446180480 series 2999972
News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and coastal communities. The baseline for these measurements—sea level—may seem unremarkable, a long-familiar zero point for altitude. But as Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg reveals, the history of defining and measuring sea level is intertwined with national ambitions, commercial concerns, and shifting relationships between people and the ocean.
Sea Level: A History (University of Chicago Press, 2024) by Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg provides a detailed and innovative account of how mean sea level was first defined, how it became the prime reference point for surveying and cartography, and how it emerged as a powerful mark of humanity’s impact on the earth. With Dr. Hardenberg as our guide, we traverse the muddy spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and the Himalayan foothills. Born out of Enlightenment studies of physics and quantification, sea level became key to state-sponsored public works, colonial expansion, Cold War development of satellite technologies, and recognizing the climate crisis. Mean sea level, Hardenberg reveals, is not a natural occurrence—it has always been contingent, the product of people, places, politics, and evolving technologies. As global warming transforms the globe, Hardenberg reminds us that a holistic understanding of the ocean and its changes requires a multiplicity of reference points.
A fascinating story that revises our assumptions about land and ocean alike, Sea Level calls for a more nuanced understanding of this baseline, one that allows for new methods and interpretations as we navigate an era of unstable seas.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1274 епізодів
Manage episode 446180480 series 2999972
News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and coastal communities. The baseline for these measurements—sea level—may seem unremarkable, a long-familiar zero point for altitude. But as Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg reveals, the history of defining and measuring sea level is intertwined with national ambitions, commercial concerns, and shifting relationships between people and the ocean.
Sea Level: A History (University of Chicago Press, 2024) by Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg provides a detailed and innovative account of how mean sea level was first defined, how it became the prime reference point for surveying and cartography, and how it emerged as a powerful mark of humanity’s impact on the earth. With Dr. Hardenberg as our guide, we traverse the muddy spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and the Himalayan foothills. Born out of Enlightenment studies of physics and quantification, sea level became key to state-sponsored public works, colonial expansion, Cold War development of satellite technologies, and recognizing the climate crisis. Mean sea level, Hardenberg reveals, is not a natural occurrence—it has always been contingent, the product of people, places, politics, and evolving technologies. As global warming transforms the globe, Hardenberg reminds us that a holistic understanding of the ocean and its changes requires a multiplicity of reference points.
A fascinating story that revises our assumptions about land and ocean alike, Sea Level calls for a more nuanced understanding of this baseline, one that allows for new methods and interpretations as we navigate an era of unstable seas.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1274 епізодів
Alla avsnitt
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1 Jenny Shaw, "The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery" (UNC Press, 2024) 54:20
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1 Lindsay O'Neill, "The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey Into and Out of Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 49:27
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1 Martyn Percy, "The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England" (Hurst, 2025) 49:48
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1 Noa Shashar, "The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850" (Brandeis UP, 2024) 42:42
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1 Mario Cams and Elke Papelitzky, "Remapping the World in East Asia: Toward a Global History of the 'Ricci Maps'" (U Hawaii Press, 2024) 50:27
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1 Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale UP, 2024) 56:51
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1 Adam R. Nelson, "Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America" (U Chicago Press, 2023) 1:07:26
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1 Kathryn Taylor, "Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice" (U Delaware Press, 2023) 43:33
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1 Ruby Lowe on John Milton’s Definition of Free Speech 1:24:52
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1 Marcel Elias, "English Literature and the Crusades: Anxieties of Holy War, 1291-1453" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 26:09
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1 Adam Pennington, "Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles: The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty" (Pen and Sword History, 2024) 48:23
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1 Pamela Allen Brown, "The Diva's Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata" (Oxford UP, 2021) 1:01:19
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1 Sophia Rosenfeld, "The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life" (Princeton UP, 2025) 35:45
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