113 episodes

Threshold is a Peabody Award-winning podcast about people and the planet. Each season, we do a deep dive into one pressing environmental story, exploring it through the intersections of science, politics, culture, and environmental justice. We aim to make space for thoughtful, honest, and intersectional conversations about human relationships with the natural world.

Season 4: "Time to 1.5" documents this profound moment in human history, when the window for keeping global heating to 1.5ºC is still open—just barely.

Season 3: "The Refuge." The controversy over drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Season 2: "Cold Comfort." Climate change in the Arctic through the eyes of people who live there.

Season 1: "Oh Give Me a Home." Can we ever have wild, free-roaming bison again?

Threshold Auricle Productions

    • Society & Culture
    • 5.0 • 1 Rating

Threshold is a Peabody Award-winning podcast about people and the planet. Each season, we do a deep dive into one pressing environmental story, exploring it through the intersections of science, politics, culture, and environmental justice. We aim to make space for thoughtful, honest, and intersectional conversations about human relationships with the natural world.

Season 4: "Time to 1.5" documents this profound moment in human history, when the window for keeping global heating to 1.5ºC is still open—just barely.

Season 3: "The Refuge." The controversy over drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Season 2: "Cold Comfort." Climate change in the Arctic through the eyes of people who live there.

Season 1: "Oh Give Me a Home." Can we ever have wild, free-roaming bison again?

    Bison Dispatch #3: The Bison Range

    Bison Dispatch #3: The Bison Range

    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 from. Earlier this year, we came back to the Bison Range to find out how things are going for the herd and what the restoration of this land has meant to the Tribes.
    Transcript
    A special offer for our year-end donors!
    On March 13, 2024, host Amy Martin and managing editor Erika Janik will take you behind the mic for a special virtual event—Stories in the Wild: Seven Years of Making Threshold—sharing the triumphs and tribulations we experience when creating a season of our show.
    Year-end donors—at any giving level—will receive a code for a complimentary ticket when reservations open. Can't make the event? Ticket holders will gain access to a free recording. Donate today to support our work.

    • 9 min
    Bison Dispatch #2

    Bison Dispatch #2

    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 Bison Program’s 2020 Conservation Update (especially “Making Sense of Numbers” on Page 12) 
    A paper by other scientists with a different perspective: “Bison limit ecosystem recovery in northern Yellowstone”
    Subscribe to our newsletter
    Episode transcript
    Support Threshold by making a donation today

    • 13 min
    Bison Dispatch #1

    Bison Dispatch #1

    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 management? Send your questions to us at outreach@thresholdpodcast.org and we’ll try to answer as many as we can in an upcoming dispatch.
    Read the plan here
    Learn more about the plans at one of the virtual public meetings:
    August 28, 2023 10:30 AM -12:00 PM MT and August 29, 2023 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM MT
    What's brucellosis? It's a bacterial disease, primarily occurring in bison, elk, cattle, and pigs.
    Learn more about brucellosis here.
    Sign up for the Threshold newsletter here. It's the best place to stay up to date on this issue and everything else going on at Threshold.
    Episode transcript
    Support independent nonprofit journalism by making a donation to support Threshold today. Donate here

    • 17 min
    Best of: This Most Excellent Canopy

    Best of: This Most Excellent Canopy

    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: astrophysicists Dr. Anjali Tripathi and Dr. Hannah Wakeford, and hydroclimatologist Dr. Francina Dominguez. 
    Join us in giving the atmosphere its due.
    This episode originally aired on February 8, 2022.
    Find the transcript for this episode here.
    Please share Threshold with friends, family, and community.
    Sign up for our newsletter, a monthly invitation to explore our relationships with the changing planet.
    Stay in touch with us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or at listeners@thresholdpodcast.org

    • 42 min
    Stay Connected to Threshold

    Stay Connected to Threshold

    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, watching, and listening to by subscribing to our newsletter. 
    Subscribe to the newsletter

    • 1 min
    1.5 Still Matters

    1.5 Still Matters

    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 temperatures.
    But we don't think that. And here's why.
    Threshold's year-end fundraiser is underway right now. Donate today to keep Threshold going strong. Our listeners make this work possible. 
    Sign-up for our newsletter
     

    • 7 min

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