Holiday Listen: Threshold Season 5: Hark

It's time to slow down, get quiet and listen; really listen

That time of the year is upon us when we need to let things go. Let the candles run and melt, let the fireplace roar until the wood is burned to ashes, let your hair down, and take that uncomfortable bra off. It’s cozy pants time.

Every year, right on the heels of the Bingey List, I like to share a different kind of listen. It must be reflective of what’s going on in the wider world, be a sonicly rich series and also have enough content to dive in for a binge listen. Most importantly, it must have the ability to take you away somewhere, with sound.

This year I’ve got something a bit out of the ordinary, and quite otherworldly, which is ironic because it’s all about the natural world we live in.

Hark begins by reminding us that it’s time to listen to what’s around us

[Amy Martin]: If the planet is a dinner party, we are the guests who are ruining the conversation…assuming our voices are the most important in the room.

In Episode 1 we ship off to Australia. But not on land, talking to humans. Instead, we go right to Shark Bay, off the Western Coast of Australia, where we meet some dolphins.

The entire series works to bring us further inside the natural world. It’s a quiet confrontation of climate change, but rather than confront, it offers a reflective and soothing glance.

[Amy Martin]: Maybe the first step is slowing down, and letting the voices of our planetmates back in.

What is saving the world means listening to it?

The first step in healing any broken relationship, is to listen.

Hark is an opportunity to fall in love with sound. Maybe it will remind you how to hear things again, or perhaps hear it for the first time, like this. Hark invites you to listen for the original version of sound…the way that the natural world sounds.

Season 5: Hark will give you a whole new way to see, and hear, the world around you.

Maybe you’re heading off on a vacation…or your ears need to hear something to make them feel like they are somewhere far away. Either way, take this series with you.

We begin with the dolphins, and connect that to the ooze of life. And from there, we continue to meet more creatures in the wild. Have you ever thought about the sound a coral reef makes? Exactly. It’s time to tune into this level of sound.

The first six episodes will be available before the end of the year, and then in February the second portion of the series.

Put together, this season will prompt you to listen to everything around you. And you might just hear things a little bit differently after this.

The following is a Q+A with the Treshold team that answers a few questions about the latest season of Threshold.

1 - Describe this series in 10 words or less.

An exploration of the power and promise of listening.

2 - How many places and locations did you visit to make this series?

For Hark, we visited more than two dozen locations across eight countries, recording both interviews and sounds from nature. We’d love to travel for all our reporting, but there are obvious time and financial limitations, so we supplement field reporting with virtual interviews. We’re also fortunate that many scientists working in sound shared their recordings with us, which we’ve included throughout the season.

3 - Where did the idea come from for this season?

Many of us don’t realize what a recent phenomenon it is that we spend much of our lives mainly hearing human-made sounds. For tens of thousands of years, we’ve survived on this planet by listening to lots of sounds coming from lots of creatures, as well as to the processes of the Earth itself. Incredible things happen when you open yourself up to non-human voices, and it inspired us to make space to listen to other intelligences, and understand the consequences for us and our planet if we don’t.

4 - How long ago has it been in development?

Our host, Amy Martin, began thinking about this project over a decade ago, initially conceiving it as a book. At a certain point, though, communicating these ideas on paper didn’t make sense—we wanted to explore them while actually listening. So, we waited until we could create something in audio form.

That turned out to be a great decision because, in the past decade, the field of bioacoustics exploded. For the past two years, our team has dove into these new frontiers of listening—through extensive research, reporting, and production—to arrive at what you hear today.

5 - How do you create a storyline about an idea, instead of a person, or a chronological story?

Creating any season of our show is long and nonlinear, but an idea-based season opens the door to a million structures and angles—both a blessing and a curse. We decided to use chronology as our foundation and built our journey through sound on top of that to keep these big ideas rooted in something concrete.

6 - Did this season change the way you hear the natural world now?

The voices of our nonhuman planet-mates have always been interesting and meaningful to us, but we’ve learned that more beings are listening and communicating in more ways than we could’ve ever realized. Our lives are playing out inside a web of conversations, and tuning into them is truly transformative—even if it’s unclear who’s talking or what’s said. Listening is an expansive experience and, perhaps equally important, it’s fun.

Holiday listens from the vaults

Last year’s Holiday Listen…

My first Holiday Listen….

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pssst: Have you seen the 2024 Bingey List yet?