Soundscape

When We Talk About Animals is a series of in-depth conversations with leading thinkers about the big questions animals raise about what it means to be human. Supported by the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School and the Yale Broadcast Studio.

When We Talk About Animals

Interview with Bernie Krause, author of The Great Animal Orchestra

Conversations with thinkers whose work has challenged us to rethink our place in the animal kingdom. Subscribe on iTunes or Soundcloud.

Ep. 0 - Coming soon: When We Talk About Animals

A few years ago, our guest, Dr. Natalie Kofler, was completing her postdoctoral training in molecular biology at Yale University. She was actively using CRISPR gene-editing technology to study the mammalian cardiovascular system to try to develop better tools to treat human vascular diseases. While attending talks on conservation biology at the Yale School of Forestry, she started to wonder: Could the invasive emerald ash borer be genetically edited with these same techniques to save American ash trees? Could coral reefs be genetically edited to be more resilient to warming waters? Should humans develop and use these technologies to change nature? If so, how? And who gets to decide? 

Today Dr. Kofler is a leading thinker on these questions and an important voice on the potential environmental applications of gene-editing technologies -- technologies that have the extraordinary potential to end malaria or to suppress Lyme disease, but also to change or delete entire species and to transform life in previously unimaginable ways. To think clearly about their use, she says, forces us to rethink who we are, to define what is important to us, and to reconsider how far our human knowledge of nature’s interconnectedness extends. Dr. Kofler serves as founding director of Editing Nature, a Yale University initiative that works to explore the potential environmental applications of newly developed and developing gene editing technologies, to promote public engagement around their use, and to strengthen the regulatory process to ensure these technologies are used responsibly. She is also the author of numerous scientific research papers, most recently as the lead author on a Science Magazine paper calling for a new global governance body to assure the just and informed evaluation of these technologies’ benefits and risks.

Ep. 1 - Natalie Kofler asks: What role should humans play in editing nature?

Dr. Peter Godfrey-Smith is professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney and the author of Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Consciousness. We discuss how our distant evolutionary cousins, cephalopods, are challenging ancient assumptions about the nature of consciousness. For more information about the episode and about Dr. Godfrey-Smith's work, visit whenwetalkaboutanimals.org.

Ep. 2 - Peter Godfrey-Smith asks: What can the octopus teach us about consciousness?

Twenty minutes southeast of Des Moines, Iowa, you’ll find a large, unassuming cement complex with fenced in grounds. You’d never know it, but inside are five bonobos—including the world-famous Kanzi—thought to be the only remaining nonhuman apes capable of communicating verbally with humans. We speak with Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh about what she’s learned from and about bonobos, humankind's gentle cousins, during an extraordinarily ambitious, 30-year investigation into their minds.

Ep. 3 - Sue Savage-Rumbaugh on learning from humanity's closest living relatives

In 2007, Dr. Irene Pepperberg said goodnight to her avian research subject, Alex, an African Grey Parrot. “You be good,” he replied. “I love you.” “I love you, too,” Dr. Pepperberg said, to which Alex asked, “You’ll be in tomorrow?” “Yes, I’ll be in tomorrow.” Alex died the next morning, prompting an international outpouring of grief that included an obituary in the Economist. We speak with Dr. Pepperberg, whose pioneering experiments with Alex revolutionized the field of avian cognition, about how she used communication as a window into his mind.

Ep. 4 - Irene Pepperberg on revolutionizing what humans think of bird brains

Do you know what noise a hungry sea anemone makes? Soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause does. Armed with over 5,000 hours of recordings, he takes Ian Sample on a journey through the natural world and demonstrates why sound is a powerful tool for conservation First broadcast on 15 June 2018. Help support our independent journalism at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sciencepod">theguardian.com/sciencepod</a>

Soundscape ecology with Bernie Krause - Science Weekly podcast

Bernie Krause says if we really listen, we’ll hear an animal orchestra out there and we need to protect it.

“Fully 50 percent of the habitats I’ve recorded are now quiet. It tells us about so many things about ourselves and how we’re doing in relationship to the rest of the living world around us,” says Krause.

Crosscurrents managing editor Martina Castro, producer of a series called Audiophiles, and Audiograph producer Julie Caine visited Krause in his studio, in Glen Ellen, on the edge of Sonoma Valley Regional Park to discuss the 4,500 hours of soundscapes he’s produced – and how to find the origins of music in the world’s wildest places.

Krause says, “If we can hear well, then we need to be really quiet and listen to the natural world around us, because it's healing, it's very informative, it has lots of information, tells lots of stories it's a narrative of place. If you want to know where you are, listen to what's happening around you and you can tell much more about the place that you're in by what you hear than by what you see.”

Click the audio player below to hear the first part of this episode.

Entering the soundscape with Bernie Krause: Part One

Bernie Krause actually got his start in music. He was trained in violin at a very young age. Later, he recorded with some big time musicians, like the Doors, The Monkees, Stevie Wonder, and George Harrison.

He was among the first musicians to experiment with synthesizers, and worked on movies like Rosemary’s Baby and Apocalypse Now.

But he was looking for something more, and in 1968 he and his creative partner, Paul Beaver, decided to make an album that would incorporate natural sounds. It was called Wild Sanctuary.

When Beaver passed away suddenly, Krause took that as a sign and left the musical world for the natural one, for good – and has been building his collection of soundscapes ever since.

Click the audio player below to hear the third part of this episode.

Entering the soundscape with Bernie Krause: Part Three

In 1968, Dr. Bernie Krause was leading a booming music career. A prodigiously talented musician and early master of the electronic synthesizer, Krause was busy working with artists like the Doors and the Beach Boys and performing iconic effects for blockbuster films. Then Warner Brothers commissioned him to create an album incorporating the sounds of wild habitats, so he headed into Muir Woods with his recording equipment. What he heard changed his life and triggered a fifty-year odyssey.

Then and there, Krause decided that he wanted spend the rest of his life recording and archiving the music of wild animals and wild places. He quit Hollywood and began traveling the world. The soundscapes he recorded were full of epiphanies about the origin of our own culture and music, about the profound connectedness of creatures, and about the unseen tolls of human activity. Previous wildlife recordings isolated the calls of individual creatures, but Krause recorded habitats as a whole. He soon proposed a new theory of ecosystem functioning: that each species produces unique acoustic signatures, partitioning and occupying sonic niches such that the singing of all of the creatures in a healthy ecosystem can be heard, organized like players in an orchestra. 

Today, Krause’s astonishing archive contains sounds made by more than 15,000 species. It is, as The New Yorker aptly put it, “an auditory Library of Alexandria for everything non-human." Fifty percent of the recorded habitats no longer exist due to habitat destruction, climate change, and human din. We spoke with Krause about the beauty of and perils facing wild music, the extraordinary science of soundscape ecology, and how sound impacts the welfare of animals. The music in this episode is from Wild Sanctuary (www.wildsanctuary.com).

Ep. 39 - Bernie Krause on saving the music of the wild

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