Nature's Archive Podcast

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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: It was a surprisingly warm late February day needing to recharge, I drove to a park near Lincoln, Nebraska, close to where I lived at the time. When I arrived, I saw something new on the far side of the reservoir. It looked like massive white and gray boulders lined up along the length of the dam.

Then in one astonishing moment, all of these boulders lifted out of the water taking flight simultaneously by the thousands. My mind couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, and then the sound hit me. It was thousands of snow geese, a deafening cacophony of honking and wing flapping that washed over me, cleansing my stress, and reinvigorating my spirit.

Fast forward 20 years to today, and anytime I see snow geese take flight, I instinctively replay this experience. And in my lifetime so far, I have so many of these lived experiences. It’s the magic of sound.

Today’s guest, Amy Martin, is the creator of the incredible Threshold Podcast. The current season [00:01:00] called Hark!, Is an immersive experience all about listening to the natural world.

As the podcast website says, in this season of Threshold, we investigate what it means to listen to non-human voices on our planet and the cost if we don’t. Today, we dive into some of the highlights of the Hark season, which is still ongoing, ranging from dolphins to tree hopper insects. And we’ll explore how listening is such a deeply personal and distinct experience for everyone.

I’m incredibly excited to share this episode with you today. You can find the Peabody Award-Winning Threshold podcast on any podcasting app or@thresholdpodcast.org. You can also follow at Threshold podcast on Instagram. And Amy has a Substack newsletter called Letters to Earthlings.

So without further delay, Amy Martin.

Amy, thank you so much for joining me today,

[00:01:51] Amy Martin: Thank you for having me on.

[00:01:53] Michael Hawk: and we were just chatting here a little bit. You are joining me from Sweden. What time is it in Sweden right [00:02:00] now.

[00:02:00] Amy Martin: It is about four 20 in the afternoon.

[00:02:04] Michael Hawk: Alright. So thank you for taking time out of your afternoon for this discussion here today.

[00:02:09] Amy Martin: pleasure.

[00:02:10] Michael Hawk: there’s so many things I want to talk about. This is always the hardest. Part of the discussion is where to start. And, you know, I, I learned of you through your podcast Threshold, and it was funny because you came onto my radar through, I think Future Ecologies aired one of your episodes.

And I started listening to it and it’s like, how have I missed threshold all this time? So I started listening to your back catalog I think season one was about bison and I remembered like, oh, I’ve actually listened to this before. So you’ve been making podcasts for like eight years or longer?

I don’t know. and I had to rediscover you because you’ve created so much great work over the years.

[00:02:50] Amy Martin: That’s cool. I love the rediscovery story. Yeah. I started Threshold. I kinda started working on it before I knew what, what it was gonna be called in, I [00:03:00] think it was 2015. It might have even been the very end of 2014. So it’s about 10 years. But I officially founded the little nonprofit that is the, the Home for a Threshold that’s called Oracle Productions in 2016.

So 10 years, nine years, something like that.

[00:03:15] Michael Hawk: I have more catching up to do because I think I missed a season or two between then and now. so I’m excited about that. Yeah.I am always curious when I meet great people like yourself that are doing such important work, I wonder like, how did you get here? had you always had an interest in nature or was it more of a, discovery later in life, like in university or something like that?

I’m just curious where this connection came from and how you put it all together to, create such amazing environmental journalism.

[00:03:49] Amy Martin: Oh, thanks. I would say, yeah, I always had. An interest or maybe, maybe what I would say is I’m lucky enough to have never had [00:04:00] it like strained out of me because I think an interest in and a connection with the living world around us is just inherently human. and so for me it feels like less a question of how it was found and more just like.

The happy accident of being born in a place where I had room to roam and, space and time to be out imagining in the natural world. And, some, great family vacations to national parks and things like that. but really also, I think I just, I do really think it’s just human and, and so just early exposure and then no reason for it to be kind of like, beaten out of me.

I just got to hang onto my natural love for, you know, and curiosity about like what’s growing, what’s flying, what’s in the creek, what is the name of that plant? What is that butterfly? You know? It just, and I don’t mean to overstate it, it’s not like I’m some fabulous naturalist or.

You know, I didn’t get a biology degree or an ecology degree. but that connection with everything around us, [00:05:00] the stuff that we call the natural world, which I think is so funny ’cause it’s just everything but us. So we just call it the world. it’s just always been there,

[00:05:10] Michael Hawk: I really hadn’t thought of it that way before. That we all have this inherent connection. I think that’s sort of obvious in retrospect, but some people don’t have a means to express it at an early age, and other people have it taken away for one reason or another.

So that’s, very profound right out the bat here.

[00:05:28] Amy Martin: I don’t know about Profound, but I will say also unfortunately, it’s like a privilege. It’s become a privilege to. Have access to outdoor spaces where, where you can be a kid and run around and feel safe and explore. And that is tragic because I think give any kid, you know, a backyard, a farm, a park, and they’re just gonna like, they wanna play and they wanna play outside.

It’s the most oldest thing in the world, you know? So I was lucky enough to have that privilege and I, I wish every kid did.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Michael Hawk: And speaking of that, I saw in your profile that you grew up in Iowa on a farm. can you tell me what that was like?

[00:06:08] Amy Martin: Yeah. For the first like seven years of my life, we were in town in a tiny little town in eastern Iowa called Preston. And then, we bought a farm and moved like a mile and a half out outside of town. And I feel so lucky that my parents made that move.

And I also feel lucky that, it was sort of unusual for an Iowa farm because I think as a fellow mid-Westerner, you would know that, I mean, that land in the Midwest is so fertile and is so productive that in general. Every square inch of land is turned into crop land or houses like that. That is kind of the story, especially of Iowa.

or, you know, or room for, for livestock. And our farm had, it was 80 acres and like half of it was sort of rocky and the soil wasn’t that great and it was a little bit hilly in Iowa terms. So there were 40 acres, half of the farm. That [00:07:00] wasn’t corn, which is sort of unusual. and so that meant that was space for me to.

Wander around and pretend like I was Laura Ingles Wilder and you know, have long dramatic stories in my mind of what was going on and make little houses outta sticks and just, you know, just putts around. and then we also had sheep, which was really a big thing for me to get to. Be a witness and a, and a helper and a friend and all the other complicated things.

That one is, with livestock, you know, took him to the four H and all of that. And Yeah. You know, helped do the hanging and, worked in the garden and just all the, all the farm stuff and, it was completely normal and not exceptional at all in my world at the time. And looking back on it, I feel like it really was.

I see now, especially as our country and the whole world becomes less and less agrarian that I was kind of. Getting to experience something that is a dying and [00:08:00] diminishing way of life. and so I’m just really glad that that was my experience. I also just wanna say, I think one of the things that’s so interesting about growing up on a farm in the time that I did, in the place that I did, is.

It was monoculture all around me. You know, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna pretend that it was like some wilderness experience. I mean, the Midwest and Iowa in particular, some of the most impacted land by human, development in the country, even if it’s, you know, looks like open space. Like it is so controlled, it is so soaked in chemicals.

My dad was a, fertilizer and pesticide dealer. And yet you find these little spaces where, there’s things that aren’t as neatly controlled and where animals are living that you don’t expect. And there’s funky little things in the soil. I guess I just don’t want to gloss over the parts of it that are very much corporate industrialized.

Well, at the same time I was very much connecting to rocks and trees and birds and [00:09:00] sky.

[00:09:01] Michael Hawk: It really is interesting to think about what you were able to experience as a kid. I have this dream of somehow being able to go back in time and seeing. These lands were like 250 years ago, 300 years ago. on the different points of time really in the past, and how much more abundance there must have been, back in those eras.

[00:09:24] Amy Martin: Yeah.

[00:09:26] Michael Hawk: So how did you end up on a path towards, becoming a producer of a podcast, environmental journalism, and so forth?

[00:09:35] Amy Martin: Yeah, I certainly did not plan it. I loved radio, I loved audio. We listened to our local NPR affiliate. And so I think in a way that’s part of it. It’s just that I love sound, I love being told stories through sound. it’s how I remember things best. and I worked at that same radio station when I went to college.

At the college I went to, happened to be the host for that NPR affiliate, WVIK. Rock Island, love you guys. but then I had this [00:10:00] whole other world as a musician for quite a while. even as I was doing music, I was also kind of doing random documentary projects for nobody. Like, I recorded a minute of sound a day for a year just because I wanted to, I like would make.

Friends, little documentary audio documentaries of their weddings as presents. I just, I love documenting things in sound and telling stories in sound. I moved to Montana in my late twenties and, really finally got to live out my love of the natural world more. And I think it just kind of all, bubbled together in a pot and eventually I was like, I wanna start a show.

So I did.

[00:10:42] Michael Hawk: And I think it gets pretty meta pretty quickly here because you’re talking about your love of audio and that’s why you created a podcast. So what better thing to do than have a podcast about acoustics and audio in nature? So that’s where you’ve, that’s where you’ve ended [00:11:00] up most recently.

[00:11:01] Amy Martin: It is super meta. I know it’s like ridiculous. I’m an audio person who loves nature, who made. A season is making a season of a show about audio in nature. It’s called Hark. This season is called Hark and it’s, yeah, it’s about listening, the power of listening and sound, and what changes when we tune into the natural world around us.

[00:11:24] Michael Hawk: I would love to dig in a little bit more. I mean, you have this inherent love of audio that we’ve firmly established now at this point. how did, after doing four other seasons of Threshold, did it just become obvious that this is what you needed to do? Or What was the genesis of this idea for a full season about audio and nature?

[00:11:44] Amy Martin: I actually, before I started Threshold, I had the idea that I wanted to do a book about. Sound in nature and listening in particular, just the, the, all the different ways of listening and what it means to listen and how different [00:12:00] creatures are listening and even how plants are listening. All this different stuff.

And I got so far that I, I, I. Found a, a literary agent and pitched it to her and she was kind of interested and I messed around for a while. I had never written a book proposal at all, and I was kind of messing around with it. It took me forever. as I was working on it, I, for one thing, I was, you know, working to try to survive in other ways

I just kept feeling like, something’s off with this, something’s off with this. And finally I realized like, this isn’t a book, this is, this needs to happen in audio somehow. But I hadn’t started threshold yet, so I just shelved it and And then when I started the threshold, I, I mean, I have a giant folder of, an imaginary folder.

I have a folder in my mind of seasons I could do for the next 300 years,

[00:12:45] Michael Hawk: Oh, I bet.

[00:12:47] Amy Martin: and that’s one of them. And when we finished the last one, I was like, now I need to do this now. So I did.

[00:12:53] Michael Hawk: I recently read, An Immense World by Ed Yong and you know, he gets into some of the [00:13:00] vocalizations and unexpected vocalizations of insects and animals and, you know, there’s definitely an interest in people understanding that yeah, this world is a lot more complex than we give it credit for.

[00:13:12] Amy Martin: I love that book. It’s a great book.

[00:13:15] Michael Hawk: it is, it is. And yeah, I’d say anyone who loves that book will love this season of the podcast as well, just to make that point clearly. So one of the things that you do talk about, a theme that’s interwoven throughout is how pausing and listening can help people sometimes in surprising ways.

can you tell me a little bit about some of those discoveries? Like I, I, I’m sure you had discoveries while making the podcast, but some of this is a lifelong. Accumulation of experience and discovery.

[00:13:46] Amy Martin: Yeah. I think one of the things that’s really fun about this topic is that. It’s truly accessible to everyone, including deaf and hard of hearing people, some of whom I interviewed for this show. Like, you don’t have to hear airborne [00:14:00] sound to be a good listener.

Some of the discoveries and some of the things that have influenced me the most are the simplest things. Just this morning I was sitting outside riding in my backyard for a few minutes and I heard something and I was like, I think I know what that is. I think I know what is, and it just stopped me in my tracks and I looked up and I waited and sure enough a crane flew overhead.

Actually, three cranes flew overhead together and I love their sound. It’s so dinosaur. It’s. So otherworldly, you know, and it was two minutes outta my day, and it brings me joy. it stopped me, it opened me. It just gave me a reason to be fully present. And that is available to all of us all the time.

even if we’re in the busiest, loudest city, you can still like stop and just listen to all the noises that are there. for me anyway, it’s incredibly grounding and it just sort of like. Makes me aware of like, I happen to be alive in this time, in this place right [00:15:00] now. and it kind of just opens me up to be taking in what’s outside, of me in a really, fleeting but interesting way.

So there’s that kind of discovery, but then there’s everything, you know, from that to like the. more esoteric stuff. one of the things I have learned in the process of making the season that I just love is these little tiny hairs that are on the inside of our cochlea called cilia.

They, when you look at pictures of them, like microscopic, they’re teeny, teeny tiny. So you have to like, have microscopic pictures of them. They look so much like seagrass. They look so much Like this waving kind of billowing grasses that are in the ocean. And the reason why I make that association is that’s what’s happening in our ears, is this liquid is moving around in there and it’s the movement of the liquid against the cilia transmitted into electrical impulses that go to our brain, that allow us to [00:16:00] hear.

And that’s cool just in and of itself. But when I discovered that, or when I learned that, corals, little coral polyps, teeny tiny. Very, very, very ancient organisms. Their bodies are covered with cilia. This is like, it’s such an old form that evolved. We don’t know for sure. I mean, corals don’t have brains.

We don’t know for sure what they can quote unquote hear, but. It’s a form in nature that is repeated and repeated and repeated. It’s like the macroscopic form is like this seagrass, the microscopic form on the cilia and inside our ear, and it’s on all kinds of creatures. Some of them have them on the outsides of their bodies, and I just love the idea that these sensitive tiny little hairs are like flowing in this liquid in all these different, Configurations and some of what they do is turn acoustic energy into electrical energy that we understand as sound, [00:17:00] and it just like, it’s mind blowing to me. It’s just cool.

[00:17:05] Michael Hawk: Yeah, like when you sort of take the reductionist point of view as to like, how do we operate as human beings? We have a sensory system, an electrical system, and a processing system, When you look at animals and even plants, in a lot of cases it’s very similar. There’s a sensory system, an electrical system, whether there’s a central processor in the form of a brain or some other kind of chemical processing that’s a result of receiving that signal.

maybe that’s sort of beside the point because they are able to sense the world and react to the world in some way. And, and I, I often think of that, like how similar we really are to so many of these other organisms.

[00:17:43] Amy Martin: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s so important and so fun to understand that our way of sensing things and our way of making sense of the world is just so particular. and every living thing has its own way, and it doesn’t, it really [00:18:00] doesn’t seem like it serves us too. Try to figure out like who’s the best, you know, who’s the smartest, who’s got the most complex, da, da, da, da.

Because, for one thing, if we do that, the more we learn, the more we’re gonna understand that in lots of realms, we are not the smartest or the most complex. In other ways, of course we have very unique abilities. but so do lots of other. Plants and animals, and the magic of it is just understanding that like, okay, a tree hopper is hearing in a certain way.

A flower is hearing in a certain way. A fish is hearing in a certain way. We are hearing in another way and producing sounds in these other ways. it doesn’t have to be about superiority or inferiority, but the fun, magic, how it all kind of fits together and everybody’s got their own little slice of the acoustic pie or story to tell, it feels wondrous to me.

[00:18:48] Michael Hawk: I want to ask you about the story that you told a moment ago about the cranes that you heard this morning, and, that sound it seems like that sound is really resonant to you. Do [00:19:00] you think? That it’s so meaningful to you because you have this knowledge of what being is making that sound and what their history is and some of the natural history that’s associated with the crane.

can people still have this connection that you described without maybe this deeper knowledge that you have?

[00:19:22] Amy Martin: definitely. ’cause I don’t think I have that deep of a knowledge of cranes. I mean, I know a little bit, but I am the furthest thing from a crane expert. absolutely. I think people can, I think people inherently do. And I also think it’s really different for different people.

You know, like for some people. Having, you know, being able to put the name and the, the Latin name and the genus and understand all of that. I mean, that’s cool. I love learning that stuff. But for some people that’s like what it’s about. That’s great. For some people, they could care less and they won’t remember, and maybe it even feels off putting in some [00:20:00] way.

I think we all can just kind of find our way in the way that we do.

I think that lived real world experience of hearing, feeling, seeing something, a living thing, you know, that can unite everybody from the taxonomy aficionados to the taxonomy haters and everybody in between the, experts to a second grader who’s just never heard a crane before and doesn’t know what a crane is.

we all can get excited about hearing one or seeing one. Just as the physical experience of it, and from there, we can go off in our own directions, I think.

[00:20:34] Michael Hawk: Yeah, and I do think a crane is a really good example because anyone who’s heard a crane before, even if you’re not a nature nut. And you hear this, you can’t help but stop and be like, what is that? What is that sound like? What’s going on here? And then of course it starts the journey of discovery.

[00:20:53] Amy Martin: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:54] Michael Hawk: And I guess on a sort of a personal note as well, in the world of [00:21:00] animal vocalizations. When I started birding years ago, I remember going out with people who are really good birders and they can identify everything, and I quickly learned that so much of what they identify is through. What they hear, they bird by ear.

And I just could not relate to that. At first, I wanted to see the birds, I wanted to see these colorful, charismatic organisms. But now here I am, I don’t know when I officially became a birder, but you know, 10, 15 years later and I get as much joy hearing the birds as I do seeing the birds because I think partly because.

I can just in an instant hearing that vocalization recall past experiences that, you know, just from observation, from being out in nature that I had with that specific species of bird. And so you’re right, there’s a full spectrum here of, you know, from the journey of discovery to recollection of days of your.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Amy Martin: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and just to bounce off of that for a second, I think one of the things that’s really cool about learning bird voices or just creature voices is it does tap into something on the emotional level. for me, it’s hard to replicate in other forms.

Um, and I’m just thinking about like, you know, if you hear the voice, like say of a, of a grandparent who’s passed away, you have a recording. I, again, I shouldn’t say, you, me, this is my experience. If I hear the voice of my grandmother who has passed away. brings her to life for me and pulls me into a memory in a way that as much as I love a picture, it just doesn’t have the same effect

It’s like, whoa, I’m with her. And I think it’s partly ’cause sound takes place over time. And so you’re in listening to a voice. You know, you’re, you are kind of like in a span of time again. And so I think there is something like that that happens with listening to the natural world and [00:23:00] listening to these other animal voices is it’s like, oh yeah, it bypasses the intellectual and goes right into the heart, I think.

[00:23:07] Michael Hawk: Yeah, it’s like it’s hardwired in, in some way within our being.

[00:23:11] Amy Martin: Yeah.

[00:23:14] Michael Hawk: So back to Hark, uh, the current season of Threshold. One of the things, like right off the bat in episode one that struck me was your experience with the dolphins in Western Australia and you had just been out on the sea experiencing, a pod of dolphins along with some researchers that seemed to just have such deep knowledge of, uh, of their environment.

[00:23:38] Amy Martin: but towards the end, you said something that, I thought was really profound. But right now, it’s time to take a deep breath and appreciate where I am and what I’m getting to witness. I don’t have to understand at all to know that I have just been visited by wondrous beings, creatures full of beauty and. [00:24:00] Power and intelligence, and they’ve survived on this planet for millions of years by listening to each other.

[00:24:16] Michael Hawk: so what really stood out to me in that is it somehow it positioned me.

Into kind of a thought experiment in a way. and that was, what if dolphins never existed and then suddenly, magically as if arriving by alien flight, there were dolphins here now. In that world, we’re witnessing these creatures, you know, cooperating, communicating, working, playing, you know, all the things that you saw.

I feel like we would just be so much more amazed and awestruck by the exact same being. what I wanted to point out with that was your ability and your storytelling to [00:25:00] trigger those things in me as the listener. And so on one hand. I’m making a plea to people listening to us right now. Go check out threshold because you’re gonna have these experiences as well.

Uh, but you know, I’m wondering from your perspective, did you find other sort of profound juxtapositions as you experienced some organism communicating in a way that you maybe just had never even considered before?

[00:25:29] Amy Martin: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll tell you about a couple of them, but I also, just before I do, I just wanna say kudos to you for. Taking in a prompt like that and, and going with it, with your own imagination and ideas and, and, and thanks to you, because that is the absolute dream of, I think any storyteller and certainly my dream.

Like I, I, it’s a co-created process, this meaning making of these stories. And so it’s so gratifying to hear you say, to say you had that thought. And it’s a really interesting thought, and I completely agree that [00:26:00] if, if we were just introduced to dolphins, if dolphins flew in on a spaceship, it would change our worlds.

And instead we live with them and,

[00:26:08] Michael Hawk: And take them for granted

[00:26:10] Amy Martin: Totally. so one thing that comes to mind as another kind of moment of revelation for me is. Fish talk, fish make sounds all the time. And fish are the first vertebrate animals on our planet. so they’re, I think it was like around 480 million years ago, they evolved and we don’t know, they probably didn’t start communicating acoustically immediately, but these animals that you know. It’s kinda hard to love a fish. You can be admiring of a fish, you know, but you don’t, most people don’t bond deeply with a fish like they do with their cat or their dog. when I really began to understand how much Phish talk and I was hearing all the different Phish voices, it really did change my [00:27:00] relationship with them.

I feel like I’m just so much more interested in them. I can relate to them better and, I put a, a microphone under a frozen lake here in northern Sweden in the spring, which was, feels like most people would call it winter still. and I managed to capture the sound of a fish, croaking for a minute there.

but also just talking to other people who spend their lives documenting, recording, and trying to make sense of fish voices and understanding. How few of them we’ve recorded and been able to identify. It’s just a world of mystery. And, um, they’re saying all kinds of things and they make choruses, they sing together in choruses.

I mean, it’s adorable and fascinating. They get together in the ocean and make these ginormous choruses that can be louder than rock concerts. And who to thunk it? I mean, I, I just had no idea. I guess another thing that I learned that I mentioned earlier is these little [00:28:00] insects, tree hoppers and leaf hoppers.

[00:28:01] Michael Hawk: I was gonna ask you if you didn’t bring it up, I was gonna ask you about those ’cause that one is so amazing.

[00:28:06] Amy Martin: Oh my gosh. So I grew up, as we said, in Iowa surrounded by leaf hoppers of all kinds and tree hoppers. I’m sure. Didn’t have any idea that I was moving around in a world that was full of really banana sounds like loud, otherworldly sounds that I,

[00:28:27] Michael Hawk: maybe you can describe if people aren’t familiar with what a leaf. Hopper or a tree hopper is, you know, what they look like, where they live.

[00:28:34] Amy Martin: These are teeny tiny little insects. The tree hoppers in particular tend to have these. Bonkers, kind of like roofs, their bodies. They look like, well, I’m thinking of Rex Cocroft. the scientist who I interviewed about them, he was like, they look like little Starship Enterprises.

And they do some of them. they also have evolved. Some of them look like bird droppings. Some of them look like leaves.

[00:28:56] Michael Hawk: And I’ll put some pictures, of ones I’ve seen in the show notes as well, just to [00:29:00] help, people get a perspective as to what they look like.

[00:29:03] Amy Martin: Yeah, they’re gorgeous, but they’re tiny, and so you can not ever look at them. Not, or not ever notice them. But then it turns out they are making all of these sounds that you can be standing right next to and not hear. And it’s not because it’s not loud enough, it’s because they’re vibrating their abdomens against like the stem or leaf of a plant.

And in that vibration, they’re transmitting vibratory sound, sound that you can feel. Rex and some other scientists have figured out it’s not actually that complicated to take that vibration and turn it into audible sound. It’s the exact same technology that we use in like pickups on, microphones on acoustic instruments.

ones that touch like the body of a guitar or violin or something. You just put that on the plant and then you can hear that these teeny tiny, very hard to see insects are making. Really big sounds. It sounds [00:30:00] almost like, some of them sound like elephants almost. Like they’re just like huge. Like, and, and I just love it that they’re just doing that where they live all or through the temperate regions of the world, I believe in, I think even in some of the tropical regions.

So like they’re everywhere making these sounds, walking around in their cool spaceship outfits and we’re completely oblivious to their lives.

[00:30:26] Michael Hawk: One of the stories I’ve told here on the podcast was how, you know, I was, I was generally nature aware, but during the pandemic I started a practice of, every lunch hour going in my backyard and seeing what I could see, what I could photograph. And, you know, it began with sort of the backyard megafauna, you know, the birds and squirrels and things like that.

But very quickly, just through observation, it turned into looking at little insects and, you know, soil organisms and other things. And yeah, one of the. Surprising discoveries was just how many leaf hoppers and a few tree [00:31:00] hoppers I was able to find in my own yard. different species and mass quantities of certain species in particular.

so yeah, they’re out there. it’s one of these overlooked organisms that are playing a big role in the world that we live.

[00:31:15] Amy Martin: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:16] Michael Hawk: Do you have any other sort of plant oriented stories? you know, that you’re able to share a discovery, an episode number, you know, however you’d like to convey that.

[00:31:28] Amy Martin: Gosh, I’m terrible about remembering episode numbers, but the same scientist I referenced a minute ago, Rex Cocroft, who is one of the world experts on tree hopper and leaf hopper, vibratory sound. partnered with another scientist named Heidi Apple and together they discovered that plants are, actually picking up.

the sound of predators like caterpillars chewing on their leaves, and they’re reacting to the sound of that [00:32:00] by sending out chemical defenses and the whole story of how they made that discovery. Was so delightful. I interviewed them separately and then, um, and then pieced it to get, pieced the interview together.

it was just so fun to hear two people tell the exact same story from slightly different angles. especially because I think one thing that’s really fun about them is they’re both, they’re both like scientists. Scientists, you know, like, they’re like, we are gonna be skeptical until the end.

And I say that because there is a little bit of a trend in the plant world for people to get kind of woowoo and kind of like. Plants are reading my mind, you know, or I frowned at the plant and it got all brown, you know, kind of some frankly kind of BS sort of stuff. And I think Heidi and Rex are just so rigorous and they’re like.

We have a sense that it’s possible that plants are picking up on sounds, biologically relevant sounds. Um, not just like music tones and whatever, but we are gonna be so [00:33:00] rigorous in how we go about testing it. And so they walked me through that. I actually had to edit out a whole bunch of those details.

It was really fun, but I knew the audience was gonna be like, what? I’m lost here. and then they get to this moment where the data is coming in to test this idea. And they were among the first people to prove that some plants actually are listening to the sound of a chomping caterpillar and reacting to that, sending out a chemical defense saying, get off my leaf, because of the sound and what that opens up into.

And the idea that plants can listen, that you can listen without a brain is so cool. and yeah, there’s more related stuff in the season, but that, that’s what comes to mind when you ask that question.

[00:33:44] Michael Hawk: Yeah, that is a great example. I was, amazed, like you captured that. Journey that, that process that they went through so well in the episode. I don’t want to give away anything else because I think it’s worth a listen, for anyone who is interested. and [00:34:00] speaking of listeners, for our listeners here today, do you have any, suggestions or insights that you’ve gained for how they can, put to practice this art of listening and experiencing the world?

Just, simply based on, on what you’ve learned.

[00:34:15] Amy Martin: You know who I’m thinking of as Evelyn Glennie, this amazing percussionist I interviewed who also happens to be deaf, who said the, and she said it with a beautiful Scottish accent, which I will not try to replicate. Um, but she said, you know, the great thing about listening is. You can just do it. You don’t need a guru, you don’t need to take a class, you don’t need to add a whole bunch of complications.

You can just do it. And this again, is coming from a person who is not able to pick up airborne sound, but she’s incredibly sensitive to vibrations and can use those to make amazing music. And I think in some ways that’s the best advice is just taking a minute to do it and feeling. [00:35:00] What changes inside ourselves when we have that moment of like actually listening, not just thinking, oh, I hear such and such, and then going back to whatever we’re doing.

Even just taking five seconds to be like, huh, what? What is it? Oh, that’s a robin. Interesting. Or, I don’t know what it is. Hmm. And then go back to what you’re doing. You know, I think those little moments, it’s basically just like a handshake with the natural world outside of ourselves or little like touching of palms of like, Hey, you’re there.

I hear you. I see you, I feel you. And little by little, I think those moments can make a really big difference in opening us up to how connected we are to everything around us.

[00:35:40] Michael Hawk: Yeah. And somehow that, that reminded me of, you know, as a school kid, I don’t know if it was through scouting or just through a science class but I remember. Experiences, and I still do this at times where, we were told to just sit and listen and try to count all of the different animals that you hear [00:36:00] making noises.

And of course the majority would be birds a lot of times, but, you know, there could be insects or other animals too. And you know, if, if you were asked in advance, how many do you think you’re gonna hear? you might say three or four, but when you really listen, there’s so much going on.

[00:36:18] Amy Martin: Hmm.

[00:36:18] Michael Hawk: And one thing, you know, this is more tactical, but for people who really wanna put a label to what they’re hearing. I’ve been surprised at how many of my friends are using the Merlin app to identify different birds that are out there.

Family members, like people I would never have expected posting on Facebook about, wow, this app is amazing. you know, all these things I’ve heard all my life, I’m now learning what they are. Uh, you know, so that’s, that’s a fun way to sort of build up that knowledge base too.

[00:36:52] Amy Martin: Yeah, Merlin is so cool. When it came out, I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but it just felt so magical [00:37:00] to me as a person who just loves sound so much that I feel like, I remember making a couple voice memos for people and being like, you will not believe this. You have to get this. It’s transformative.

I just was like a total, uh, Merlin, you know, evangelist and I use it all the time.

[00:37:16] Michael Hawk: And the hardcore birders, of course, are probably sitting here kind of scoffing a little bit because Merlin’s not perfect. Of course it makes mistakes, but it’s a way to really jumpstart. a knowledge base of bird vocalizations and it keeps improving too. So that’s another thing if you tried Merlin three years ago, it’s so much better now than it was just a few years ago.

Yeah. Yeah.. Well, this has really been enlightening and it’s fun for me as a podcast producer to kind of get a peek behind the scenes a little bit as to, what you went through and how you put together this season. but it’s almost time to wrap up, so I’d love to ask you if you could think back.

Do you have any top of head events, like a wildlife encounter, a book, a mentor, something [00:38:00] that really stands out to you as really escalating your interest in the natural world?

[00:38:05] Amy Martin: well, the first thing that comes to mind is actually a moment with my dad, on our Iowa Farm and, just being out in a field with him in the spring when we were getting ready to plant and so the soil had been tilled And it’s just like, I mean, it was probably 30 seconds, but I just remember being crouched down. next to the ground with him and him picking up a handful of Iowa soil and talking about, this is so rich, this is so precious. This is some of the best soil in the world. This is soil that, has this history of all these plants were here a long time ago and they died and they, slowly built up this really thick, rich soil.

That’s what makes the Midwest special and this farm special. And, I just feel like it stands out in my [00:39:00] memory maybe because. First of all, it was relational. It was with my dad. And I think that’s something that sometimes gets overlooked is like how important it is to have time with other people appreciating and experiencing and just being in the natural world together.

I think it really lays down another level of meaning and importance for us, especially as kids. but also the fact that it was something that was so ordinary. I mean, I would’ve just called it dirt, you know? It’s dirt. and here was my dad telling me this is important. You know, this is worth something.

This is meaningful. This has a history, it has a story, and. It just made an impression on me enough that I, I feel like I can close my eyes and kind of picture it. I think that’s, I’m really grateful for that. I’m grateful that he took the time to say that to me, and he took the time to notice something and ask me to notice something that wasn’t grandiose or particularly beautiful I wouldn’t have expected to have like, an emotional connection with, [00:40:00] but in that moment.

I did, I felt emotionally connected to his handful of soil, and it’s a beautiful and profound thing that I want to remember and replicate.

[00:40:11] Michael Hawk: I can’t help but think about. If I were in the same position as your dad with my daughters, how I probably would’ve messed that up. I probably would’ve been like, look at this soil. There’s so many nutrients and organisms and carbon, like, I would’ve gotten too deep into the science.

And they would’ve been like, what are you talking about? and their memory would be, you know, my crazy dad, you know.

[00:40:36] Amy Martin: Or maybe they’d be like, I wanna be a soil chemist. Thank you for talking to me about the nitrogen.

[00:40:42] Michael Hawk: Yeah, perhaps, perhaps. So what do you think is, is missing or hindering broader action to support biodiversity? Like, you know, biodiversity is core to what Jumpstart Nature does and, you know, I’m always looking for ways to reach people. So I’m curious, what do you see hindering this, this [00:41:00] connection that, that we all, as you said earlier, inherently have at the beginning of life.

but don’t necessarily carry it forward.

[00:41:08] Amy Martin: I think at the risk of sounding. Overly sentimental. I honestly think a huge thing that’s missing is just love is, and I don’t think it’s that we don’t have love for the living things around us or, or things like the soil, the rock, which, you know, some people would say our living, other people would not.

it’s, I think we all can find that, but I think that we are so separated from it, especially in. wealthier societies and, I think it’s like this sense of passionate and personal connection, that is one of the big hindrances to making meaningful change around questions of like biodiversity and, and preventing extinction and things.

It’s [00:42:00] if, when it’s abstract, when it’s like a problem that’s out there. Like, maybe, you know, oh, I don’t wanna have a world where there are no more black-footed ferrets. that seemed like, you know, given the two choices, yeah, I’d prefer black-footed ferrets. But if you have met one, if you’ve been on the land where they live, if you have that. Ability to form a personal connection. And I don’t mean, I’m not talking about that, like, you know, you’re speaking deeply to the black-footed ferret, but I mean, we have this capacity to love the creatures around us, the plants around us, even things we don’t understand that well.

Even things that might be troublesome or weird in some way. I think that we need as much of that as we can possibly. Find in ourselves and make spaces for that to be found, together. because if it were a question of data and information and convincing arguments, then we wouldn’t have any problems.

We’ve got [00:43:00] all the data in the world showing us that we need other species. We need biodiversity for our own good, even if it’s just purely for self-interested reasons. It is an advantage to live in a more biodiverse ecosystem. that’s totally clear, but that isn’t moving the needle. what moves the needle for people the most is when there’s this sense of like, I have to part of protecting this thing, this place because it’s meaningful to me.

I need it not just. I want it, or we should have it intellectually, but I need it. I am, connected to it. I have a personal relationship with it. and I think what gets in the way of us not having that is often just, again, like this lack of access You know, as we pave over more and more of the world and it becomes harder and harder to find those places, it’s easier and easier to just never develop that connection, to lose it.

to have it be a special thing you do once a year on [00:44:00] vacation, that’s not the same thing as, feeling it on the day-to-day level. but there’s a virtuous feedback loop we can get there if we have opportunities For just time in places where you can encounter life outside of human life, even if the human life is totally mixed in, then the connections form.

And with the connections comes the passion and the determination to protect and, be part of the solution, I hope.

[00:44:28] Michael Hawk: Yeah, it, that resonates strongly with me and a lot of work to do to restore that connection, provide those opportunities for access and so forth. Alright. So. Looking towards the future, do you have any other upcoming projects you’d like to highlight? Can you tease what’s next for Threshold after this season?

[00:44:48] Amy Martin: I can’t, but I can just say there’s more hark happening.

[00:44:51] Michael Hawk: Okay, more

[00:44:52] Amy Martin: There’s more hark. I guess I can tease a little thing. We’re working on restarting something that we started a few years ago called Threshold [00:45:00] Conversations, which is an interview show, which you would be familiar with since you were running one.

and that’s something that we’re gonna start releasing on the feed again when we get hark done. But first, more harking.

[00:45:13] Michael Hawk: I am looking forward to that. one of the things that we do here as well is, like so many places we have a newsletter and I try to keep my listeners up to date with past guests and what they’re doing. So, uh, when that comes out, I’ll make sure to let people know.

[00:45:27] Amy Martin: Oh, thank you.

[00:45:28] Michael Hawk: Yeah. And in terms of, following you and your work, and if people want to go straight to the source and not, use me as a gatekeeper to when you’re doing stuff, where can they go to follow you and keep up to date?

[00:45:39] Amy Martin: the best thing from my perspective to do is just find threshold on all the podcast apps, whichever one you listen to and follow us there. and threshold’s also on Instagram, and then we have a mailing list as well, a newsletter if you wanna sign up for it at our website, which is threshold podcast.org.

For me personally, I’m most active on Substack right now. I [00:46:00] have a substack called Letters to Earthlings, and if you just look for Amy Martin on Substack, I come up and, a lot of what I write there is very much threshold adjacent. Not all of it, but, one of the things that I’m loving about is it’s a place for me to talk more directly and hear from people.

if you hear an episode and you have a question about it, find me on Substack and we can chat about it There.

[00:46:20] Michael Hawk: . Well, I’ll make sure to poke around a little bit and find all the social media that you’re active on and link to them in the show notes as well as your substack and, everything else. So. this has been a lot of fun and you know, very insightful. Is there anything else you wanna say before we call it a day?

[00:46:39] Amy Martin: No, other than just thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for making the space for this kind of thinking and feeling together. And thanks so much for listening to the threshold and being interested in talking with me. This is totally delightful for me to think out loud with you about this work.

So I appreciate you having me on.

[00:46:56] Michael Hawk: Well, I feel really privileged to have had the opportunity. So again, thank you so [00:47:00] much. I really, I appreciate the work you do and I appreciate you.

[00:47:03] Amy Martin: right back at ya.