Olivia: Alright Jackson, I've got a book for you today: A Book of Waves. What do you picture? Jackson: Easy. A big, glossy coffee table book. Lots of pictures of surfers at sunset. Maybe some inspirational quotes about going with the flow? Olivia: That's what I thought too! But this is A Book of Waves by Stefan Helmreich, a cultural anthropologist at MIT. And it's less 'hang ten' and more... 'hang on, waves explain everything from COVID-19 to the collapse of empires.' Jackson: Whoa, okay. An anthropologist at MIT writing about waves? That's an unusual mix. So it's not about surfing? Olivia: Not just surfing. Helmreich's big idea is that we need to become 'wave-literate.' He argues waves are a form of media, carrying information about ecology, politics, and even our own history. The book is based on his prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures and it's been called a 'future classic' by scholars, though it's definitely a challenging read that has divided some general readers. Jackson: Okay, my interest is officially piqued. Where do we even start with an idea that big? Olivia: We start with a concept he calls 'wave clutter.'

Jackson: Wave clutter? That sounds like the mess my desk is in. What does he mean by that? Olivia: It's the perfect starting point because it’s so counter-intuitive. Helmreich tells this story about being on a research vessel off the coast of California. A scientist shows him the radar screen, and it's just this 'scribbly disorder.' Jackson: Just noise, right? Olivia: That's what you'd think. But the scientist explains it’s 'wave clutter'—the interference pattern created when the radar's electromagnetic waves skim over the ocean waves. And for Helmreich, that becomes the central metaphor of the book. He argues that the world isn't something to be tidied up, but a place of constant, overlapping, interfering waves. Clarity comes not from removing the clutter, but from learning to read it. Jackson: Huh. So it's about finding meaning in the mess? Not just clearing it up? Olivia: Exactly. And he shows how this 'wave' concept is everywhere. He gives this incredible list of waves from the turn of the millennium. You have the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed over 200,000 people. Then you have the 'Green Wave' protests in Iran and the 'wave of resistance' of the Arab Spring. And of course, we all just lived through the 'waves' of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jackson: That's a wild list. A tsunami, a political protest, and a virus. That feels like a bit of a stretch. Are these just loose metaphors, or is there a deeper connection? Olivia: That's the core of his argument. He says all of these waves, whether they're physical, social, or biological, are "energies that gather up anxieties, terrors, and, sometimes, optimisms about the shape of history and of the future." They are, in his words, "objects through which people seek to apprehend time, to foretell futures." Jackson: To foretell futures. That's a big claim. So by understanding the pattern of a wave, we can understand where we're headed? Olivia: Precisely. Whether it’s a scientist modeling a storm surge, an economist tracking a business cycle, or a citizen watching protest movements spread, we are all, in our own way, trying to read the waves to see what's coming next.

Jackson: Okay, I get the big picture. But how does this connect to science? You said he's an anthropologist of science. Olivia: That's the perfect pivot. Helmreich shows that wave science itself is never neutral. It's always 'oriented' by human needs, politics, and power. The most powerful example he gives is the story of Walter Munk. Jackson: I've never heard of him. Olivia: They called him the 'Einstein of the Oceans.' He was a legendary oceanographer at Scripps Institution. And his career was forged in war. In the early 1940s, the Allied forces needed to know when and where to land troops for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The success of the entire operation depended on predicting the waves. Jackson: You're kidding. The D-Day landings depended on a weather report for waves? Olivia: A very, very specific one. Munk and his mentor developed the first reliable methods for wave forecasting. They gave General Eisenhower the go-ahead for June 6, 1944, based on their prediction of a narrow window of calm seas. It’s a stunning example of how knowledge about waves is a form of power. Munk himself said that the best mathematicians in the world couldn't calculate a breaking wave if they'd never actually seen the ocean. It required this blend of theory and messy, real-world observation. Jackson: Wow. So our scientific understanding of waves was literally shaped by the needs of war? Olivia: It goes even deeper and darker. After the war, during the Cold War, Munk and other Scripps scientists were involved in Operation Crossroads—the nuclear bomb tests in the Pacific. The Navy wanted to know what kind of waves a nuclear explosion would create. Jackson: That's chilling. Olivia: It is. One of the lead scientists, Roger Revelle, infamously said, "The atomic bomb is a wonderful oceanographic tool." They were using these horrific weapons to gather data, all while exposing the Marshall Islanders to catastrophic levels of radiation. It's a stark reminder that science is never 'pure.' It's always funded by someone, for some purpose. Jackson: It completely changes how you think about scientific discovery. It's not just about curiosity; it's about power and politics. Olivia: Exactly. And that brings us to today. Helmreich quotes a scientist at a climate conference who says, "what happens now with the waves is partly because of us." The waves are no longer just a strategic variable for war; they are becoming 'waves of warning,' carrying the physical signature of climate change right to our shores. The human fingerprint is now in the water itself.

Jackson: So if our dominant way of studying waves has been so tied to military and industrial goals, are there other ways to understand them? Other ways of 'reading' the water? Olivia: Absolutely. And this is where Helmreich presents this brilliant, powerful contrast. On one hand, you have a culture that has spent centuries trying to 'domesticate' the waves. He takes us to the Netherlands. Jackson: The country of dikes and windmills. Olivia: The very same. For centuries, their national identity has been forged in a battle against the sea, which they personified in folklore as the 'Waterwolf.' They have a saying: "God created the Earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands." They've built these monumental engineering projects, like the Delta Works, to tame the water. Jackson: Wow. So they're literally trying to program nature. Olivia: They are. And their latest project, the 'Sand Motor,' is even more ambitious. It's a massive peninsula of sand they built on the coast, designed to let the waves and wind act as 'engines' to slowly distribute the sand and build up the coastline over 20 years. They are turning their old enemy into an ally, a piece of infrastructure. Jackson: That's incredible. A completely engineered relationship with the ocean. What's the contrast to that? Olivia: For that, Helmreich flips the perspective entirely. He takes us from the North Sea to the Pacific Ocean, to the Marshallese wave pilots. For centuries, they navigated the vast, open ocean without any instruments. Jackson: How is that even possible? Olivia: Through a deep, embodied, sensory knowledge. They learned to feel the subtle patterns of ocean swells in their bodies, in the rocking of their canoes. They could detect the presence of an island dozens of miles away just by reading how the waves reflected and refracted around it. It's a form of knowledge that is about communion, not control. Jackson: That's amazing. So what happened to it? Olivia: It was almost completely wiped out. First by colonialism, and then devastatingly by the US nuclear tests that we just talked about. The very islands that their navigation was centered on became uninhabitable. But there's a powerful revival movement happening, inspired in part by the famous Hōkūle‘a voyages, to bring this knowledge back. Jackson: So one culture builds giant machines to control waves, and another learns to listen to them with their bodies. That's an incredible contrast. It feels like two totally different ways of being in the world.

Olivia: And that's the core of the book. It's not just about what waves are, but what they mean to us, and how that meaning is shaped by our culture, our technology, and our history. From a military tool, to a climate warning, to a sacred guide. Jackson: It makes you realize that even something as 'natural' as a wave is loaded with human politics. The Dutch see an enemy to be tamed, the US Navy sees a strategic variable, and the Marshallese see a messenger. It’s the same water, but completely different worlds. Olivia: And Helmreich argues that for too long, we've been dominated by a 'Northern theory' of science—one rooted in control, extraction, and engineering. The Dutch approach, for all its brilliance, is a perfect example. The Marshallese perspective represents a form of 'Southern theory'—a different way of knowing, one based on relation and observation, that is absolutely vital for our future. Jackson: So becoming 'wave-literate,' as he calls it, is about learning to see all those hidden stories in the water. Olivia: Exactly. It's about recognizing that the story of a wave is also the story of colonialism, of climate change, of cultural survival. And it forces us to ask who gets to tell that story. The book leaves you with a powerful, lingering question. W. E. B. Du Bois famously said the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the color line. Helmreich suggests the problem of the 21st century will be the problem of the water line. Jackson: Wow. And as that water line rises, we have to decide whose knowledge we're going to trust to navigate it. Olivia: As the water line becomes the new front line of the 21st century, whose knowledge will we listen to? Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.