Series

Seas The Day is a podcast produced at the Duke University Marine Lab, in Beaufort, North Carolina.

Reflecting the diverse research and educational interests of faculty, students, and staff, Seas the Day covers a wide range of topics. To make sense of this, we’ve organized these into series.  Currently, we have four series, described here. We’ll update this page as other series are added.

Conservation & Development

This series features podcasts produced by students enrolled in the course, Conservation and Development (ENV 551). The course addresses conflicts between societal goals of conserving the environment and enhancing the well-being of people. It evaluates efforts to reconcile conflicts, and how those efforts reflect particular understandings of people and nature, and of the relationship between them. The focus in on the international level, and on how conflicts play about between the Global North and South. 

For their class project, students explore the themes of the course in relation to different topics and, instead of writing a term paper, they produce a podcast.

But there’s a catch!

Since the course is taught during the Marine Lab’s spring semester in a block schedule format, students complete the entire project over a 4-week period.  It’s a podcast bootcamp… 

View episodes in the Conservation & Development series


The F-Files

This series features work done by faculty and research staff at the Duke Marine Lab. In each episode, we pick a recently published paper and use it to launch a conversation with the author(s). We talk about the paper, but also things you can’t learn by reading — why it was written, what it represents personally and professionally, the challenges of getting the work done… We seek to go beyond the paper, and get to know researchers as, well, people. 

View episodes in the F-Files series


PhDeep

PhDeep is a series that hopes to inform, inspire and demystify the PhD life. “Life” does not stop happening just because you are pursuing a doctorate degree, so we talk to students to learn more about the challenges of facing a global pandemic, being a parent, doing community outreach, missing home, and many other mundane topics while pursuing one of the highest achievement of their lives.

View episodes in the PhDeep series


Whale Pod

This series features podcasts produced by students in the summer session of the marine mammal course, based at the Duke University Marine Laboratory.  During this six week course, student’s work in teams to produce a podcast describing a current conservation issue or challenge for a marine mammal species or stock of their choice. This podcast serves as the student’s final project and aims to: a) increase the student’s understanding of a current issue in marine mammal science and conservation; b) teach them how to critically read scientific papers and summarize their findings’; c) give them exposure to and allow them to interview and talk one-on-one with an expert in the field of marine mammalogy; and d) stress the importance of and provide guidance in articulating marine mammal science to the general public. 

Over the course of just six weeks, the students have to select a species and topic of interest, conduct background research, identify suitable interview subjects, draft interview questions, conduct interviews with leading experts in marine mammal science, and produce the final podcast. It’s a whirlwind, but the results speak for themselves.  We hope you enjoy listening!

View episodes in the Whale Pod series


Lab Notes

Lab Notes is a catch all for one-off podcasts. Maybe an undergraduate is here for a semester and decides to make an episode related to that experience, or a former student wants to be a guest podcaster, or a masters student got that dream internship and wants to share the work they do… Lab Notes will bring these stories together in one series.

View episodes in the Lab Notes series

Are you a current or former Duke Marine Lab student and want to pitch an idea? Send us an e-mail at duml-podcast@duke.edu


Contact Us

Reach out to the Seas the Day podcast team at duml-podcast@duke.edu