Whale Earwax and the Cost of Our Sensory Blindness

What can whale earwax tell us about our impact on theocean?In this episode, I dive into the strange, poetic, and troubling world of animal senses — from humpback whales dying in nets they can’t see, to the invisible pollution of our noise, light, and chemicals that disrupts ecosystemswe barely understand.We explore:How whale earwax holds decades of environmental data — an archive of our pollutionWhy humpback whales have poor eyesight — and how it’s killing themThe concept of Umwelt: the sensory worlds unique to each speciesWhat happens to our own world when we ignore, erase, or overwhelm the senses ofothersThe climate cost of sensory extinction — and why noticing is a radical actMentioned in this episode• On Whale Earwax: Ed Yong’s The Atlantic article• Ferdinando Cotugno – Areale Podcast (Italian)• Book: An Immense World by Ed Yong – on animal senses and the richness of perception• Book: The Blue Machine by Helen Czerski – on the ocean as a system of movement and rhythm