When Peter was thirteen, a blue-haired woman asked him to lift a freshly-hacked sperm whale jaw into her Volvo 245. That night in Norfolk marked the beginning of his lifelong bond and obsession with whales.

Twenty-five years later, we join a group where Peter is learning how to re-float a two-tonne life-sized model of a pilot whale.

As we follow this rescue in real time, Peter narrates a very different story: what happens to whales and to us when they breach the boundaries of the human world and how whale strandings entice a bizarre subculture of mystics, fetishists and scavengers.

Strandings premiered on 28th April 2024 at 19:15 GMT on BBC Radio 4

Peter Riley‘s research examines nineteenth- through early twentieth-century American literature in relation to labour history, poetry and poetics, and archival studies, with developing focuses on German American literature, abolitionist politics, and race and ethnicity in the United States. He also writes non-fiction, and is interested in the relationship between creative and critical prose. His most recent book Strandings: Confessions of a Whale Scavenger won the Ideas Prize for Non-Fiction. An experimental memoir, the book explores his involvement in one of Britain’s most bizarre subcultures: each time a whale washes up on our shores, a fugitive community of human scavengers descends to claim its trophies. Some are driven by magical beliefs; some are motivated by profit. For others, the need is much stranger.

Pat is a composer/multi-instrumentalist/music director/educator. Originally from the United States, in 2015 he moved to Bristol in the UK. His primary instruments are guitars and basses but he also regularly plays mandolin, keyboards, trombone, banjo, drums/percussion and occasionally cornet. To hear more of Pat’s music head to www.patmoran.co.uk