Threshold

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@thresholdpodcas...

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 toda...

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. Y...

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 qu...

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...

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...

What is sound? And what does it mean to listen? In this episode, we ask what sound 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 . We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the new season, th...

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.  Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today . To...

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

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...

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. Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently pro...

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. Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Thre...

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 Solni...

In Season 1 of Threshold, we reported on the decades-long fight to get the federal government to transfer the National Bison Range, and the bison, back to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. In 2020, it finally happened. Stewardship of the herd was returned to the people who had helped to save these animals from extinction more than a century before. It’s one of just a few cases where the...

A few weeks ago, Yellowstone National Park released a draft plan for managing bison in the park. In this dispatch, we answer your questions about the plan and what it means for the future of the herd. Read the NPS plan here Submit a comment here or mail your comment to this address: Superintendent, Attn: Bison Management Plan, PO Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190 Listen to our first dis...

Yellowstone National Park recently released a new plan for managing the bison herd. It’s in draft form, and maps out three alternatives for how to manage the herd in the future. Before it gets finalized, the public has a chance to read it and weigh in on which path is best. We talked with Morgan Warthin, chief of public affairs at Yellowstone National Park, to learn what this could mean for the fu...

A lyrical ode to our atmosphere: the invisible, underappreciated substance that makes all life on Earth possible.  There are quite a few things working against us when it comes to acting on climate change—not least of them, the simple fact that we literally can’t see the atmosphere, or how we’re changing it.  In this episode, we take a guided tour of the Earth’s atmosphere to understand...

A few weeks ago, the Biden administration approved the Willow project. It’s a plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from northern Alaska. There’s a lot of history and politics behind this story, things that tie to issues we’ve reported on in past seasons of Threshold.  Amy Martin wrestles with this project and what it means for our netzero future in this month’s issue of our newsletter. Are y...

Representatives from nearly every country in the world are in Egypt right now for COP27, the annual climate conference hosted by the United Nations. The overall goal of each COP is to make progress on climate; to get all countries moving in the same direction, toward a decarbonized world, in an equitable way, based on the best scientific information available. But some are now saying that we shoul...

In many ways, the climate crisis is an identity crisis. As we reckon with the damage we’ve done, we’re being forced into a massive confrontation with the powers, limitations, and essential nature of our species. How do we even process the notion that we can do—that we are doing—so much harm to ourselves and to all life on Earth? What is it about us that led us into this mess, and do we have what i...

The climate crisis is not just a problem of carbon emissions: it's one of inequality. In fact, global warming and global inequality are the same problem manifesting in different ways. And one of the places we see this connection clearly is at COP26. This is Threshold Season 4: “Time to 1.5.” In this episode, we follow the conflict over loss and damage, mitigation, and finance in the negotiating ro...

The UN climate talks, or COPs, are attempting the biggest, most complicated, highest-stakes group project humanity has ever known. They are, in a sense, an attempt to design a revolution—to help guide a massive societal transformation that needs to happen all around the world, all at once, to curb climate chaos. But design and planning are rarely how paradigm shifts actually happen. So how do we a...

The UN climate talks, or COPs, are a lot of different things: they're confusing, bureaucratic, inspiring, boring, infuriating, and exhilarating. They are also the only thing we’ve got to deal with climate change on a scale that matches the problem—that is to say, globally. The overall goal of each COP is to make progress on climate: to get all countries moving towards a decarbonized world—as equit...

If the steel industry were a country, it would be the world's third-largest emitter. So to prevent a climate catastrophe, this industry has to change. And not just a little bit: we have to fundamentally transform how we make one of the most versatile, durable, widely used materials human beings have ever created. That's exactly what a group of companies in northern Sweden is aiming to do. This is...