Thomas Mann House Events Archive
September 7, 2026
What the Sea Is Telling Us: Our Relationship with the Ocean in a Changing Climate
YouTube & Spotify
Info
What can the Arctic, Antarctica, and the deep sea tell us about our shared climate future? Renowned polar and deep sea researcher Antje Boetius, CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and 2026 Thomas Mann Fellow and journalist Uwe Jean Heuser met at the Thomas Mann House to discuss how changes in the oceans affect the global climate and how scientific research can inform policy and public debate. Their conversation explores different approaches to science funding in Germany and the U.S., the political implications of polar and deep-sea research, and the power of literature, film, and entertainment to bring the threats facing our oceans into the public imagination. The program is part of Uwe Jean Heuser’s 2026 Thomas Mann Fellowship in Los Angeles, which focuses on transatlantic approaches to create new narratives for climate change that reach a larger number of people across political lines.
Co-presented by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Video by Boris Schaarschmidt
You can also listen to this conversation on our Spotify.
About the Speakers
Antje Boetius is a globally recognized leader in polar and deep-sea research. She is the President and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute, a professor of geomicrobiology at the MARUM Center for Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, and a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen as part of the HGF MPG Joint Research Group for Deep-Sea Ecology and Technology. A champion of science communication, she is known for her work at the intersection of science, art, and society. She has received numerous honors for her leadership in marine science, interdisciplinary education, and science communication, including the European Research Council’s Advanced Grant, the Communicator Award of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), the “University Teacher of the Year” Award from Deutscher Hochschulverband (DHV, German Association of University Professors and Lecturers), and the Carl-Friedrich-von-Weizsäcker-Preis 2022 from the Stifterverband.
Uwe Jean Heuser studied economics in Bonn and Berkeley, earned a Master of Public Administration at Harvard as a McCloy Scholar, and completed his doctorate in Cologne. He joined the editorial team of DIE ZEIT at the end of 1991, where he founded the Reform Workshop and headed the business editorial team for 20 years before founding the newspaper’s new “Green” section in 2021. He is an award-winning non-fiction author and serves as an honorary professor at Leuphana University. At the Thomas Mann House, Uwe Jean Heuser will deal with the climate discourse, which is highly ideologized and often ends in conflict instead of uniting society. Both in Germany and the United States, he will look for new transatlantic approaches that can create the basis for a new narrative for climate change that reaches a larger number of people.