Environmental Historian and author Bathsheba DeMuth explores the past to better understand the present. As the COVID-19 pandemic settles in for the foreseeable future, the Brown University Professor and host Katie Bausler look back to the flu pandemic of 1918, and infectious diseases brought by European explorers that devastated indigenous peoples going back hundreds of years. And the impact of political denial on public health.
Bathsheba DeMuth’s first multi-award winning book, Floating Coast, An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (2019), explores the impact of what she calls self-serving ideas of human progress on the ecosystem of where Alaska and Russia almost meet. She is in the research process for her next book, on nature vs. human rights in the Yukon River watershed of Alaska and Canada. The Active Voice podcast is a 49 writers forum for discussion of the place of writers and artists in these challenging times. Listen and subscribe to Active Voice on Apple, Spotify, Simplecast or 49writers.org