We’re not the only voices in the room. By “we,” I mean us humans—we’re not the only beings on this planet talking or worth listening to.
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This is the idea at the center of Season 5 of Threshold. It seems so obvious that I feel almost silly writing it down, let alone building an entire season of our show around it. Then again, when was the last time you listened—really listened—to another creature or the sounds of a place for more than a few minutes? When was the last time that was even possible—when were you in a situation where you could hear anything other than our human noise?
Many of us spend the vast majority of our time hearing nothing but human-made sounds. While this has become normal, it’s actually quite strange. For tens of thousands of years, our species, like all species, evolved in a multi-voice context. We survived and thrived by listening to lots of sounds coming from lots of creatures, and to the processes of the Earth itself—wind, water, storms, and the occasional volcanic eruption or earthquake. Only recently have humans come to so heavily dominate the global conversation.
As an audio storyteller, I also contribute to this never-ending supply of noise and sound. I love the creativity of humanity, and I find great beauty and meaning in many of the sounds we make, the stories we tell. But we’re surrounded by non-human storytellers, too. What happens when we fail to listen to them—or even recognize they have something to say? How is our lack of listening changing us and, in turn, altering the world?
This question is part of what drove me to make this season, but I'm motivated even more by its reversal: how are we changed when we let the voices of our planet-mates back in?
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I originally conceived of this season as a book, which I sketched out almost a decade ago, before starting Threshold. But at a certain point, I realized I didn’t want to just think and talk about these ideas—I wanted to explore them while actually doing this listening. So, I decided to wait and do it in audio form someday.
I’m glad I did, because in the intervening years, the field of bioacoustics has exploded. Scientists around the world are learning how to listen in to conversations among species we didn’t even know had voices, and using AI and other technologies to explore new frontiers of perception, interaction, and understanding.
While reporting this season, I recorded the dulcet tones of naked mole rats in Germany, visited a continent-wide acoustic observatory in Australia, and tramped through a Swedish forest with researchers aiming to listen to trees. There’s so much to hear out there.
Every season of Threshold is grounded in a refusal of the human-versus-nature dichotomy; that’s our starting point, our approach. But this time, I’ve gone all-in. I’m not just trying to tell a story that includes places and other beings in these episodes; I’ve attempted to hand them the mic, to let them lead the narrative whenever possible. And while I’ve enlisted a large cast of humans to act as translators and guides, for the most part, people play supporting roles. Our story is not the story; our drama is not the drama. From elephants in Kenya to insects in Iowa, I’ve spent the last two years with my microphone pointed toward the more-than-human world, and I feel changed by the experience. For the better.
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It feels risky to ask an audience to give such sustained attention to stories that don’t center ourselves. But I think the deeper risk is to let our human-centrism go unchallenged. I see our lack of listening as both a symptom and a cause of our converging ecological crises: it reflects our disconnection from the rest of life, and it also perpetuates that separation. How can we hope to solve anything—climate, biodiversity loss, profligate waste and pollution—if we wander around in an echo chamber, hearing only our increasingly agitated voices?
At the same time, the listening I’m talking about isn’t something we “should” do in some finger-waggy sort of way. It’s a gift: something we deserve, that connects us to the world and each other. And it’s fun! It’s often surprising, sometimes hilarious, and frequently a potent blend of heartwarming and fascinating. It’s common sense, really: listening to others feels good, and is good for us—and those “others” are not just people, but other living things, and our shared home.
I want to be clear, this season is not just a happy meander through the wonderful world of animal sounds. I came to this project with real urgency, and that feeling has grown stronger the more I’ve learned. We may not be the only voices in the room, but we often act like it, constantly interrupting the ancient conversations happening around us or drowning them out completely. Clearly, this is not working out well for us or them.
As we struggle to survive on this precious, damaged planet, we need to make space for all the intelligences around us—to turn our attention to their lives and their stories. Our fellow Earthlings have things to teach us, if we listen.