Today, we’re remembering a once great inland sea of grass and appreciating the sheer scale of the ecological relationships that once dominated the prairies of interior North America.
Hear the rest of this episode, “Territory Folks Should All Be Pals,” at the link in our bio.
🗺 Map data from various sources showing rough historic extent of tallgrass prairie (dark green), short grass prairie (light green), and mixed grass prairie (in the middle).
There are only four places left in the world where grasslands are large enough to function ecologically, and one of them is in Montana.
In Season 1, Episode 6: “Territory Folks Should All Be Pals,” Amy visits a grassland that has never been plowed, the American Prairie Reserve, and gets a tour from reserve supervisor Damien Austin.
Listen to the episode at the link in our bio.
🎥: American Prairie footage by Amy Martin; other footage from grasslands around the world
Although the United States began establishing national parks and forests in the late 1800s, grasslands were an afterthought, and our first ‘national grasslands’ weren’t officially declared until 1960.
In Season 1, Episode 6: “Territory Folks Should All Be Pals,” Amy visits the @americanprairie , an ambitious project to stitch together an unprecedented amount of protected grassland.
Listen to her tour of this ‘horizontal wilderness’ with reserve supervisor Damien Austin at the link in our bio.
We are making the future in the present, says Rebecca Solnit.
Visit the link in our bio to listen to our entire conversation with the writer and activist, a leading voice on the climate crisis and a dogged champion of possibility and promise.
🎥: California wildflowers (1963), from the Prelinger Archives
Turning the climate narrative upside down with Rebecca Solnit
LISTEN NOW: A Conversation with Rebecca Solnit
In June 2024, the planet hit a terrifying milestone: 12 straight months of global temperatures at or above 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels. But even as the impact of climate change becomes more visible and far-reaching, the opportunity to change the trajectory of this global crisis remains possible. Hope is possible.
Today, we’re sharing a conversation with writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, a leading voice on the climate crisis and a dogged champion of possibility and promise.
Listen here: https://link.chtbl.com/conversations-rebecca-solnit
Here’s a poem we returned to a few times in Season 4: Carl Sandburg’s “Prayers of Steel.”
Sanburg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writer, wrote quite a bit about Midwest steel towns like Gary, Indiana, where we spent time with millworkers and community members for our season Time to 1.5.
Find the entire poem at the link in our bio.
📹: Archival footage from the construction of the Empire State Building, from “Making a Skyscraper,” 1930.
It’s time for our annual pause!
We’ll be back in mid-July, but in the meantime, we’re doing our best to recharge, rest our brains, read and listen to good things for fun, and generally experience the wild world around us—we’re wishing you all the same.
Norway embodies a contradiction that the rest of the world is also facing: how can you set targets to limit climate change when you also profit enormously from fossil fuels?
Although it uses relatively little oil and promises to be carbon neutral by 2030, Norway is also home to vast offshore oil reserves that have made it one of the richest countries in the world.
In Season 2, Episode 5: “Just Decide,” Amy Martin explores the contradiction with @isalillk, a Sámi high school teacher in Trømso, Norway. Listen to their conversation at the link in our bio.
Paradoxically, icebreakers—not the get-to-know-you exercises but vessels that push open shipping channels in polar oceans—are on the rise as the climate warms. This is because the Arctic is becoming more navigable for commercial shipping and other forms of economic exploitation.
Here’s Finnish icebreaker captain Tero Vauraste on his country’s legacy of breaking the ice from Season 2, Episode 7: “Hello, Central.” Listen at the link in our bio.
(Since this episode aired there are now about 180 icebreakers worldwide, with dozens more in production—proving Tero’s point!)
Makoko is an informal community in Lagos, Nigeria, home to as many as three hundred thousand people, about half of whom live—quite literally—on the water.
In Season 4, Episode 7: “Makoko and Eko,” producer @sholalawal__ visited this community to find out how residents there are living with the ever-changing sea level of the Lagos Lagoon.
Listen to it at the link in our bio.
We have a simple, unassuming group of organisms to thank for the complex life around us: tiny bacteria in the ocean.
In Season 4, Episode 3: “This Most Excellent Canopy,” Dr. Francina Dominguez explains a huge shifting point in Earth’s history: how photosynthesis by these simple microbes sparked an explosion of oxygen-powered multicellular organisms that are the ancestors of the plants and animals that surround us today.
Listen to the rest of the episode at the link in our bio.
📽️Assorted footage of cyanobacteria, rotifers and tardigrades
Here’s a caribou-eye view that pairs perfectly with our reporting on these Arctic ungulates in Season 3: “The Refuge.”
Researchers used collar-mounted cameras to capture the dietary preferences of animals in Alaska’s Fortymile caribou herd. Like the Porcupine Herd we covered in Season 3, this herd ranges between Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory.
(Sound on for caribou noises)
🎥: @alaskanps in collaboration with @umwildlife and other agencies in Alaska
Caribou are a lifeblood that pulses across the Arctic landscape every year, and Alaska alone is home to 32 different herds.
The Porcupine herd is one of the biggest, and has the longest land migration route of any mammal on the planet.
Find out more about this herd, and its fate as drilling threatens its habitat in the Arctic Coastal Plain, in Threshold, Season 3, Episode 4: “Do It in a Good Way.” Listen at the link in our bio.
🎥: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Caribou Porcupine Management Board
From a distance, a herd of bison moves almost like a single giant organism.
Like all wild herds, this herd is trying to migrate—but in Yellowstone National Park, that’s hard to do. The lack of space has created a conundrum for both people and bison.
In Season 1 of Threshold, Amy talked to Rick Wallen, the Bison Biologist for Yellowstone at the time, about the beauty and frustration of dealing with huge wild animals on the move.
Listen to the full episode, “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People,” at the link in our bio.
The earth’s atmosphere was remarkably stable when human civilization evolved—an intricate system we turned into a global science experiment when we decided to burn fossil fuels.
In Season 2, Episode 13: “Try Harder,” geoscientist Jim White of the @cuboulder Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research breaks down what that past climate system can tell us about our present one.
🎥: Ocean current flows from @nasa Scientific Visualization Studio
Looking back on 4 seasons of Threshold. You can find a season wherever you get podcasts, and if you've already listened, share one with a friend!
Looking back on 4 Seasons of Threshold
In honor of seven years making Threshold, this Earth Day we’re looking back at each of our past four seasons.
From the history and future of the American bison, to the warming Arctic, to the prospect of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to fraught negotiations over limiting climate change, we’ve spent our time taking in the complexity of the natural world we all share.
If you’re new to Threshold, check out one of these seasons, and if you’ve listened already, consider recommending our show to a friend. Find our show wherever you listen to podcasts.
There’s plenty to debate when it comes to addressing climate change—but some things are indisputable.
Six things, according to Jim Williams, an energy systems expert at the University of San Francisco.
Listen to Jim and Amy discuss his research in Season 4, Episode 5: “Not Rocket Science.”
As the green energy economy continues to whir, spin, and grow, some communities are experiencing renewable energy development in much the same way they experienced previous development: as a form of colonization.
In Episode 6 of Season 2, “The Things I Can See on the Mountains,” Risten Turi Aleksanderson talked with Amy about how it felt when the Norwegian government began developing a new wind farm on land her Sámi family used for herding reindeer.
Since this conversation in 2017, the story has continued to play out, and last month the government reached an agreement with the Sámi over Europe’s largest onshore wind farm in Central Norway.
🎥: Google Earth imagery of a wind power development in Norway
