The Pacific Ocean — a long, calm sleep lecture about the largest ocean on Earth: how it works, why all the land on the planet would fit inside it, and what is still missing from its charts.

Why does the most peaceful name on the map belong to water ringed by hundreds of volcanoes? How was the plate its floor rests on born, and what was Panthalassa? Why has the depth of a single point been measured for a century and a half and still written as "about"? How did Japanese records of a wave without an earthquake help date a great shock on the other side of the ocean? Who drew a chart of seventy-four islands for Captain Cook? And what was found in complete darkness more than nine and a half kilometres down?

A quiet journey across the whole ocean in one night: from the Bering Strait to the cold water off Antarctica, from the birth of the ocean plate and the trenches to currents, the Ring of Fire and the reefs; the people who settled thousands of islands by reading waves and stars; and how the ocean got three names in turn — the South Sea, the Peaceful Sea, the Great Ocean.

This is the first lecture in a series about the world's oceans.

🌙 New sleep lectures on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays — history, science, nature and mysteries, told slowly enough to fall asleep to.

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