Threshold
Threshold is a Peabody Award-winning documentary podcast about our place in the natural world. Each season, we take listeners on a journey into the heart of a complex environmental story, asking how we got here and where we might be headed. In our latest season, Hark, we hand the mic over to our planet-mates and investigate what it means to truly listen to nonhuman voices—and the cost if we don't. With mounting social and ecological crises, what happens when we tune into the life all around us? Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced.
Episodes
All over the world, small groups of complete strangers are getting together to share their feelings about climate. These gatherings are called Climate Cafes, and they’re carving out space for some big emotions we might prefer to avoid. But what if talking about our feelings can also help us address the climate crisis?
Audrey Martin is a Bay Area psychotherapist and one of the leaders of the Climate Psychology Alliance of...
Last June, the U.S. the Secretary of Agriculture announced that the Trump administration intends to repeal something called the “Roadless Rule”—a policy implemented in 2001, which protected some of the Forest Service’s wildest lands from logging, mining, and road-building.
Author Ben Goldfarb examined the impacts of road and roadless areas in his 2023 book, Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. We ta...
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In this final episode of Hark, we think about listening with Indigenous storytellers on three different continents—and we have one more encounter with those magical Shark Bay dolphins.
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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Threshold is listener-funded.To keep making this work and sh...
New technologies like artificial intelligence have helped to accelerate and open up the entire world of bioacoustics, launching us into a new era of communication with the more-than-human world. In this episode, we explore the promise and perils of using AI in bioacoustics.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newslette...
Humans have filled the world with so much noise that the only sounds many of us often hear on a daily basis are our own. But all this sound isn’t great for our planet mates and it isn’t great for us either. In this episode, we look at how human-made sound makes it hard for other creatures to listen and communicate.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donati...
Homo sapiens joined the story of life on Earth just 300,00 years ago. So when and how did we start making music and creating languages? In this episode, we explore these signature sounds and discover how they just might be rooted in listening.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.
Mentioned in this episo...
Elephants communicate through a variety of calls, trumpets, and rumbles. But despite being some of the largest land animals on Earth, elephants can also be incredibly quiet. In this episode, we open our ears to elephants and discover how listening may play a key role in saving them.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign...
Modern humans emerged into a world filled with and shaped by elephants. But for elephants, living with humans isn’t always easy. Elephants have survived by adapting to all the changes we’re making to their world. But there’s only so much they can do. In this episode, we look at how we can learn to live with—and listen to—elephants.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by d...
More than 60 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth, wiping out almost all the dinosaurs. But one group made it through—the ancestors of birds. In this episode, we look at how these ancient creatures learned to listen and communicate, and how listening to birds has changed us.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our ...
Birds, frogs, dolphins, and humans—we're all big talkers. Turtles, on the other hand, are considered to be silent. But are they? In this episode, we challenge what we know about some of our quieter planet-mates.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.
Operation frog sound! Send us your frog sounds for an upcomin...
Living together in a group is a strategy many animals use to survive and thrive. And a big part of what makes that living situation successful is listening. In this episode, we explore the collaborative world of the naked mole-rat.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.
Operation frog sound! Send us your ...
A name is essential to your identity. It’s what people call you and what you respond to—it’s part of what you understand about yourself. But do other living things call each other by names? In this episode, we look at how names work in some non-human worlds.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.
Mentione...
Listening and looking for loons.
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 outreach@thresholdpodcast.org
We answer listener questions about the making of Season 5: Hark and of Threshold more broadly in this special AMA episode with host Amy Martin, managing editor Erika Janik, and producer Sam Moore.
Thanks to Kraftkabel for the use of his music. You can find the whole track here.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our ...
Sometimes a place we consider quiet is just a place we haven’t taken the time to listen.
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 outreac...
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.
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 conte...
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 threshold...
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.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.
Sometimes we have to be loud when we want to be quiet.
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 outreach@thresholdpodcast.org
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