‘What sound does a frozen lake make on a sunny day?” is the sort of whimsical question that PG Wodehouse’s Madeline Bassett might have come out with (she, you will remember, is the character who thinks the “stars are God’s daisy chain”). On Threshold, a podcast “about our place in the natural world”, you can find out.
As the sun heats the ice “it flexes and bends” causing it to emit a sort of squeaky, bloopy, howling noise like the ghost of a sad spaniel trapped in a tunnel. “Utterly surreal and totally beautiful,” our host Amy Martin says. She thinks the lake is “singing” like “something animate”. This is a bit optimistic. If these burblings count as singing, then I’m Pavarotti.
Still, the enthusiasm is nice. “To be alive on this planet,” Martin adds, “do you have to be an organism?” It seems we are on the verge of going full Madeline Bassett (are frozen lakes God’s windowpanes?), but fortunately she does not pursue this line of inquiry any further.
Threshold is the recommendation of an audio producer colleague at The Times. I’m always interested in what people who make podcasts like to listen to. Their ears are more sensitive and responsive. You can see why Threshold’s exquisite and imaginative sound design appeals to a professional. Novelists such as Henry Green are sometimes called “writers’ writers” — they appeal to people invested in the craft and technique of writing. Threshold is a podcasters’ podcast.
Naturally, it’s not long before we’re getting into “the nature of sound itself”. At this point the listener may fear things are about to go all wafty and philosophical. However, what unfolds is a lovely series of unexpected soundscapes. In one episode we are introduced to the sound of a coral reef. This turns out to be a kind of static crackle. Apparently, that’s the sound of the “claw clicks” made by innumerable tiny snapping shrimp. These clicks “produce small shock waves that are strong enough to stun or even kill small fish”.
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Elsewhere, we meet the treehopper, which is “a teeny little insect about the size of a sunflower seed”. It communicates with its treehopper confrères “by shaking its abdomen” and sending “waves of vibrations through its legs into the stems and leaves of plants”. This is picked up by Martin’s microphone as a sort of cooing or purring noise, but really belongs to a “secret world of sound called the vibroscape” where “instead of air or water … acoustic waves are moving through the bodies of plants”. I wonder if they have podcasts in the vibroscape? I like to imagine the most self-important treehoppers pompously wiggling their little abdomens to send their views on politics humming down the stems and leaves of plants.
• Sounds Wild by David George Haskell review — nature v an epidemic of noise
Elsewhere, to illustrate the limits of our hearing, Martin plays “a tone moving across the whole audible range”, which over 30 seconds rises from a deep bass “brrrr” of 20 hertz to the thin reedy wheee of 20,000 hertz. It’s not pleasant to listen to but it’s an interesting experiment and a reminder that many podcasts are unimaginative in their use of sound.
Dolphins can hear frequencies up to seven or eight times higher than humans. I rather envied their enhanced hearing ability until Martin explained that they can also “use echolocation to perceive the insides of objects”. If she were to leap into the sea with them “they could sense not just my outer surfaces but my bones and lungs”. Aargh!
If Threshold can get a little precious at times (the song of a Swainson’s thrush sounds like “a waterfall flowing up”) it is commendably imaginative. It feels like an emissary from a time before the age of true crime and political talking heads, when podcasting fancied itself an artier, more surprising medium. I am reminded of the cult show The Memory Palace, which started in 2008 and whose host, Nate DiMeo, is constantly addressing the listener as “dear listener” and launching into meditations on the meaning of seagulls. Well, sometimes whimsy is the price you pay for interesting thoughts.
★★★★☆
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