Whales thrill humans, and they always have.

The easy day-trip thrill of watching whales. The terrifying thrill of hunting whales. The ancient thrill of contemplating a creature of size beyond imagining. Even of being swallowed whole.

Philip Hoare caught whale fever in the pages of “Moby Dick,” the giant skeletons of museum display and the sight of giant humpbacks breaching.

He ended up mid-Atlantic, swimming face to face with a sperm whale, overwhelmed by all the leviathan has meant and means today.

This hour, On Point: A tale of whales.

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-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Philip Hoare joins us from New York. He’s author of “The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea” and writer and presenter of the BBC documentary “The Hunt for Moby-Dick.” He’s also the author of five previous works of nonfiction, including “Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant,” “Noel Coward: A Biography,” and “England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia.”

You can read an excerpt from “The Whale” at HarperCollins.com.

It was young men, big money, high-risk and do-or-die, lightning-speed action — and we’re not talking hedge fund traders here. When America was young and the earth’s seas were teeming, the big juicy score, the fast money, was in whaling.

Adventurous risk-takers with their eyes on the golden prize set out on the high seas with full sail and harpoon — and crews making peanuts. They brought home the great whales and casks of ambergris and oil that made the nation’s first fortunes.

Today we say “save the whales.” Then they said: “boil them.”

This hour, On Point: when whalers ruled the earth.

Guests:

Eric Jay Dolin, author of “Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America” and former policy analyst for the National Marine Fisheries Service