A new bi-weekly podcast has set sail to showcase the voices of Oceania’s people, artists and scholars. Launched this spring from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Center for Pacific Islands Studies (CPIS), the debut episode of Oceania Currents, aired on February 27 and attracted hundreds of listeners.
The new podcast is recorded in cutting-edge facilities at UH Mānoa’s Center for Language & Technology and hosted by CPIS Associate Professor Tarcisius “Tara” Kabutaulaka and Kenji Cataldo, a graduate assistant at CPIS.
“I hope listeners will learn more about Oceania, Pacific Island cultures, about the issues that are important to Pacific Islanders, and the challenges and opportunities they face in the 21st century,” said Kabutaulaka. “It is also about understanding and learning from the past in order to ‘way find’ into the future.”
The premiere episode featured interviews with past and present CPIS faculty, including CPIS Director Alexander Mawyer, Emeritus Professor Terence Wesley-Smith and Professor Katerina Teaiwa, a CPIS alumna now teaching at the Australian National University. Each discussed the significance of the Pacific Islands studies department which is centered around encompassing a deeper understanding of Oceania, a region consisting of Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
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“After months of preparation for the launch, it’s exciting to see the strong response to our first episode across Oceania, the U.S., and even other parts of the world,” said Cataldo. “Dr. Tara has had the vision for this project for some time, and the time now is right. Dr. Tara says, the currents are flowing!”
Listeners can catch Oceania Currents on Spotify and Apple podcasts. A new episode posts every other Tuesday. It also airs on KTUH every other Thursday, 8–9 a.m. and on East-West Center’s Pacific Islands Report, a collaborative project supported by the Pacific Islands Development Program and CPIS.
CPIS is housed in the UH Mānoa College of Arts, Languages & Letters.
