Going DEEP with Author James Nestor on Shorewords!

October 4, 2020

Author, journalist and adventurer -- Meet James Nestor

Lesley Ewing is back with the Shorewords Podcast, ASPN's books and literature pod, and she sits down with James Nestor, author of DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves. DEEP was an Amazon Best Science Book of 2014, BBC Book of the Week, BuzzFeed 19 Best Nonfiction Book of 2014, ArtForum Top 10 Book of 2014, New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. In 2015, the PEN American Center recognized DEEPas one of the five best books of Literary Sports Writing. The book follows clans of extreme athletes, adventurers, and scientists as they plumb the limits of the ocean's depths and uncover weird and wondrous new discoveries that, in many cases, redefine our understanding of the ocean and ourselves.  It has been translated into German, Chinese, Italian, Polish; editions in French and Portuguese will be released in 2018.   Nestor is also a journalist who has written for Outside Magazine, Men's Journal, National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Surfer's Journal, Dwell Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more.  Catch this incredible discussion with one of the most insightful and original writers in the realm.  It's a blast.

Show Transcription
This transcription was generated by a computer. Please excuse any errors.
Lesley Ewing

Hello. I’m Lesley Ewing, host of Shorewords!. This podcast combines two of my favorite things – the ocean and books. I learned to swim before I could walk and looked forward each summer to my family’s vacation at Ocean City, Maryland. As a student I was interested in science and engineering and became an environmental engineer before learning that there was something called coastal engineering. Both my 1 st and 2 nd mid-life crises resulted in me going back to school – first for a Masters of Engineering at UC Berkeley and later for a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. The first crisis also moved me from DC to the SF Bay. The second crisis reminded me how much I liked to read. Getting a Ph.D. while working a 40+-hour/week job meant that my only reading was work reports, text books and technical articles. They were all important and interesting books, but as soon as school ended, I replaced my academic text books with broader literature and realized that the coast was often a character in the fiction and non-fiction that I read. I am still fascinated by every visit to the ocean and remain in awe of what others write about the coast.