If a being doesn’t have ears, can it hear? And if it doesn’t have a mouth, can it talk?  In this episode, we spend a golden afternoon conversing with the flowers, plants, and trees. 

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We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the new season, the content or how it’s made, for an upcoming behind-the-scenes episode. You can submit your questions to [email protected] 

Listening to Threshold is free. Creating it is not.

We’ve always been committed to making the best show we can—and making it available for free. This is only possible with your financial support.

Our year-end fundraising campaign is happening now through December 31st, and each gift will be matched by our partners at Newsmatch. That means if you can give $25, we'll receive $50. It’s easy to make a tax-deductible donation at thresholdpodcast.org. Just click donate and give what you can. Thank you for listening. 

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the new season, the content or how it’s made, for an upcoming behind-the-scenes episode. You can submit your questions to [email protected] 

Insects invented song. They’ve developed a multitude of ways to listen. But insects couldn’t have evolved these complex skills without plants. In this episode, we explore the interconnected acoustic lives of insects and plants. 

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Sometimes we have to be loud when we want to be quiet. 

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What is sound? And what does it mean to listen? In this episode, we take a closer look at sound: what it is, how it works, and how what you hear may not be the same as your neighbor.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

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Resources:

Check out more from Evelyn Glennie on YouTube and on her website.

Coral reefs are some of our planet’s most beautiful and biodiverse habitats. They’re also rich with sound, a bustling marine metropolis whose future is severely threatened by climate change. In this episode, we discover the important role of listening in coral communities. 

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The planet is filled with unexpected and magical sounds… all you have to do is listen.

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We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the new season, the content or how it’s made, for an upcoming behind-the-scenes episode. You can submit your questions to [email protected] 

Beneath the water lies a whole world of sound: snorts, boops, croaks, grunts. Fish, it turns out, have a lot to say, and they’ve been communicating for a long time. In this episode, we take a dive with some of the planet’s oldest vertebrates 

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

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Special thanks to Lauren Hawkins, Miles Parsons, and Tim Lamont for many of the fish recordings. Clara Amorim and Raquel Vasconcelos recorded the Lusitanian toadfish, Herbert Tiepelt recorded the pikeperch percussionist, and Marta Bolgan provided the “unknown kwa.” Additional recordings came from more than a dozen other scientists, many of whom have contributed sounds to the website Fishsounds.

Here are the fish sounds we used in the episode:

160000_Parsons_Blackspotted croaker chorus

130000_Picciulin_Brown meager_Chorus

180000_Pine_Unknown_Chorus

170000_Parsons_Unknown_Chorus

180000_Dilorio_Unknown_Kwa Chorus

190000_Bolgan_Unknown_Kwa

050000_Tiepelt_Pike-perch_Scrape

070000_Stolkin_Striped Cusk-eel_Jackhammer chorus

180000_Staaterman_Toadfish_Boop-Grunt-Swoop

150000_Casaretto_Haddock_hum

080000_Amorim_Lusitania Toadfish_Boatwhistle_edited

1970_MP Fish_Seahorse_Click

170000_RountreeR_Aplodinotus-grunniens_Drum-Call-Chorus

180000_Rowell_Epinephelus striatus_agonistic

050000_AmorimC_Eutrigla-gurnardus_Growl-Grunt-Knock

180000_AmorimC_Pomatoschistus-pictus_Drum

For most of our planet’s existence, the Earth was quiet. The boisterous sounds of life we know today are a recent development, one that the growing field of bioacoustics is helping us understand and interpret. In this episode, we travel to Australia to listen to dolphins and meet the microbes that helped usher in life on the planet.

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We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the new season, the content or how it’s made, for an upcoming behind-the-scenes episode. You can submit your questions to [email protected]

Humans are born into a wondrous planetary chorus. But today, many of us rarely hear anything other than ourselves. In this season of Threshold, we explore a world teeming with sound and ask what happens when we tune into the life all around us. Season 5 of Threshold, Hark, is coming Tuesday, November 19th.

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In June 2024, the planet hit a terrifying milestone: 12 straight months of global temperatures at or above 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels. But even as the impact of climate change becomes more visible and far-reaching, the opportunity to change the trajectory of this global crisis remains possible. Hope is possible. Today, we’re sharing a conversation with writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, a leading voice on the climate crisis and a dogged champion of possibility and promise. 

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