Cultures are often revealed through the stories they hand down through generations. Every civilization has foundational ones. Among the stories many cultures tell, we find tales of a great flood, but the story of Noah’s flood captured the imagination of three great traditions: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The Jewish and Christian version of the flood is found in the Bible. But few people in the West know that Noah has a prominent place in the Qur’an’s foundational stories.

Listen to Jack Miles, a Pulitzer price-winning scholar, reveal, in a few brief but brilliant minutes, the subtleties between these two similar but different treatments of a story that holds a prominent place in the revelations of the three Abrahamic faiths; for many, the lessons found in this ancient story resonate in our own age overwhelmed and threatened by global disasters.