Emergence Magazine Podcast Emergence Magazine

How did the vast and varied chorus of modern sounds—from forests to oceans to human music—emerge from within life’s community? When did the living Earth first start to sing? In this immersive sonic journey, biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell opens our senses to unexplored auditory landscapes through spoken words and terrestrial sounds, tuning our ears to the tiny, trembling waves of sound all around us. Hearing three billion years of our planet’s sound evolution in the trills, bugles, clicks, and pulses of the life around him, David invites us into the space of connection with deep time and the more-than-human world that opens when we tune in to the Earth’s orchestra.
If you enjoy this audio story, check out David’s companion practice, Playful Listening, which invites you to immerse yourself in the sonic world around you. And listen to our interview with David, “Listening and the Crisis of Inattention,” on our website.
Illustration by Daniel Liévano.
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Equipped with his binaural microphone system, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton has spent the last forty years traveling the world documenting the sounds of the Earth and its inhabitants. Recording the noise pollution that permeates nearly all places on the planet, Gordon also listens for silence, for the sounds that emerge in the absence of noise. This week, we return to our audio adaptation of our virtual reality experience Sanctuaries of Silence—one of the first stories we released back in 2018. Guided by Gordon, we embark into the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the quietest places in North America. As he attunes our ears to its silence, we begin to hear the music of life emerge in every direction—the murmur of the river, the shuffle of trees, the cacophony of birdsong. We recommend putting on headphones for this one, so you can have the best listening experience.
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How can we repair our connection with what we eat, rejoining the biological web that we are a part of? In this conversation, fermentation expert Sandor Katz unpacks his book Fermentation as Metaphor, guiding us through the lessons taught by microorganisms as they change form. Exploring how our fear of the other, the unseen, and the unknowable has divorced us from the wonder of fermentation, Sandor shows us how engaging with microbial communities through food—breads, fungi, pickles, yogurts—can bring us into relationship with the tiny but vital unseen forces of the living world.
Read the transcript.
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What becomes possible, especially in the face of crisis, when we orient our consciousness towards uncertainty, emptiness, and a sense of relationship with the world beyond the self? In this week’s conversation, Australian writer and Zen teacher Susan Murphy Roshi immerses us in the tradition of Zen koan and its ability to shift our consciousness amid crisis. Delving into the power of the not-knowing mind, Susan presents koan as a gateway to truly connecting with the world around us, and speaks to how we must respond to our moment of suffering from a place of openness if we are to remember our seamlessness with all of creation.
Read the transcript.
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Spending time with a landscape opens us to the language it speaks. Can we quiet our own voices enough to hear what the Earth has to say? This week, Jenny Odell takes us on a walk through the folds and furrows of her Oakland neighborhood, listening for the memories embedded in the shape of her surroundings. Sensing the language of her local terrain, she begins to tune in to the age-old conversation between rock and water. By cultivating this sustained attention, Jenny shows how we can ask a place, as we would a person, what is your story?
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How do we taste a landscape? In this narrated essay, food and culture scholar Lily Kelting immerses us in the sounds of construction, the presence of buffalo, and the fragrance of marigold, smoke, and trash that flavor the outskirts of Pune, India. Opening our senses to the terroir of her local milk—a union between cow, community, and land—she wonders how it can help us understand the diverse and robust ecology of this edge-place.
Read the essay.
Photo: Daniel J. Rao / Alamy
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