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 up for our newsletter . Mentioned in this episode: Subscribe to Amy's newsl...
Jul 01, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 12
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 donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter. Le...
Jun 03, 2025•48 min•Season 5Ep. 11
More than 60 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth, wiping out nearly all the dinosaurs. The only dinosaurs to live through this mass extinction were 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 newsletter . Operation frog sound! Send us your f...
May 06, 2025•52 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Birds, frogs, dolphins, and humans—we’re all big talkers. Turtles, on the other hand, are considered to be silent. Or 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 upcoming episode. We want you to go out, listen for frogs and toads, ...
Apr 08, 2025•47 min•Season 5Ep. 9
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 frog sounds for an upcoming episode. We want you to go out, listen ...
Mar 25, 2025•30 min•Season 5Ep. 8
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 . Mentioned in this episode: Subscribe to Amy's newsletter, Letter to Earthli...
Mar 11, 2025•30 min•Season 5Ep. 7
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 [email protected]...
Feb 25, 2025•11 min
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 newsletter . Mentioned in this episode: Subscribe to Amy's newslett...
Feb 11, 2025•31 min
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 [email protected]...
Jan 03, 2025•4 min
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 content or how it’s made, for an upcoming behind-the-scenes episode. You can s...
Dec 24, 2024•32 min•Season 5Ep. 6
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...
Dec 20, 2024•3 min
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 . We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the new season, the content or how it’s made, for a...
Dec 17, 2024•38 min•Season 5Ep. 5
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 [email protected]...
Dec 13, 2024•5 min
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 . 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...
Dec 10, 2024•48 min•Season 5Ep. 4
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 stay connected, sign up for our newsletter . We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the n...
Dec 03, 2024•36 min•Season 5Ep. 3
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 can submit your questions to [email protected]...
Nov 29, 2024•7 min
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 . We want to hear from you! Send us your questions about the new season, the content or how it...
Nov 26, 2024•37 min•Season 5Ep. 2
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 produced. You can support Threshold by donating today . To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter ....
Nov 19, 2024•42 min•Season 5Ep. 1
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 Threshold by donating today . To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter ....
Nov 01, 2024•3 min
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. Subscribe...
Jul 31, 2024•34 min
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 U.S. government has actually returned a piece of land to the Native American people it was taken fr...
Dec 21, 2023•10 min
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 dispatch on the plan here Learn more about how many bison Yellowstone can support: The Yellowstone Biso...
Sep 14, 2023•14 min
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 future of the bison. What questions do you have about bison, bison science, bison history, and bison m...
Aug 24, 2023•17 min
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 the science, beauty, and wonder of our “magical safety blanket.” Our tour is led by a trio of scientists: astrop...
Apr 22, 2023•43 min
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 you a subscriber? Stay connected to Threshold between seasons and find out what we're reading, watchin...
Mar 27, 2023•1 min
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 should abandon hope of holding global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial...
Nov 12, 2022•8 min
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 it takes to get ourselves out of it? Who are we? And who do we want to become? This is Threshold Seas...
Jun 28, 2022•50 min•Season 4Ep. 14
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 room. Who wins and who loses in the making of an international climate pact? This episode contains str...
Jun 21, 2022•59 min•Season 4Ep. 13
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 actually make it happen? And can we do it fast enough? This is Threshold Season 4: “Time to 1.5.” In ...
Jun 14, 2022•41 min•Season 4Ep. 12
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 equitably as possible and based on the best scientific information available. But of course, every countr...
May 31, 2022•59 min•Season 4Ep. 11
