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PODCAST

The Listener Podcast

The Listening Planet, podcast series draws from a lifetime of recording the natural world across more than 60 countries and five continents, offering listeners an intimate journey into Earth’s most remarkable soundscapes. Each episode immerses audiences in authentic recordings of birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, and entire ecosystems — from fragile rainforests and vast oceans to deserts, wetlands, and remote wilderness. Through these soundscapes, you reveal the hidden voices of nature, the rich

science nature

All Episodes

9:48

Geophony: The Earth speaking

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/03/03

Birds are not the only musicians in Earth’s orchestra.Amphibians, insects, mammals and marine life all play their part. But there is another section that moves me just as deeply.The sound of the planet itself.Wind. Rain. Ocean. Thunder.Geophony.I have recorded hurricanes named Andrew, Milton, Hellen and Dorian. Each one had its own personality. Its own voice. Standing in hurricane force winds is not something most people would call relaxing… but there is something humbling about hearing the raw

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11:03

Night Insects

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/24

When darkness falls most people think the world becomes quiet.But listen carefully. The night is speaking.Katydids in the trees. Crickets in the grass. Cicadas vibrating through the air. These are not background sounds. They are the living pulse of the planet, the voices of ecosystems in balance.For more than half a century I have listened to the natural world. I have heard thriving landscapes rich with life and I have heard the silence that follows destruction. When insect choruses fade, habitats

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6:29

What happens when the natural world falls silent?

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/21

What is silence?For most people it means peace and quiet. But for me, silence is something very different. It is not the absence of sound, but the absence of life’s voices — the birds, the insects, the wild chorus we call biophony.True silence only exists in an anechoic chamber. What I seek instead is tranquility. A place where the Earth itself speaks.The rain falling through leaves.The wind moving through trees.The ocean breathing against the shore.The ancient voice of the planet.And yet, I have

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9:44

Reed Warblers

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/18

I want to share a small story with you.Many years ago, standing beside a quiet pond in the Wye Valley, I recorded my first reed warbler. A tiny bird hidden deep in the reeds, yet its voice filled the entire landscape with an endless cascade of buzzes, clicks, and song. I remember my tape running out while the bird continued, tireless, unstoppable. Even then, I knew I was witnessing something special.Moments like that shaped my life. They are why I have dedicated over half a century to capturing the

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8:16

Birding across the continent

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/14

I live in the United States now — in Florida — though for more than twenty years Washington State was my home.The human voices around me carry a different accent from my British one, yet in the natural world, especially in bird song, I often hear echoes of where I came from.When I first arrived in America, it felt as though I had to learn a new language of sound. But it was not entirely unfamiliar — more like Spanish and Italian: different, yet sharing rhythms and tones that hint at a common

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3:58

This is why I listen.

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/10

I’ve realised over the years that you have to be a certain kind of person to do what I’ve done most of my life.I can sit for hours, barely moving, listening. Not thinking. Just being. People often ask what’s going through my head and never quite believe me when I say “nothing” — but that’s the truth. It’s a kind of meditation.I think of my mind as having boxes. A reading box. A gardening box. An odd-jobs box. I only open one at a time. But my favourite box of all is the empty one. That’s the box I

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5:15

Scaled Antpitta

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/06

In the cloud forests of Costa Rica, some voices don’t give themselves up easily.This little bird, the Scaled Antpitta, speaks in low, trembling notes that melt into the forest rather than rise above it. When I first heard it, I thought it was an owl. Only later did I learn I’d been listening to one of the most elusive voices of the forest floor.I was lucky enough to record it near the volcanic slopes of Arenal. I only caught a glimpse of the bird itself — a fleeting moment — but its voice stayed

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7:37

When it's gone

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/05

Sometimes I ask people to listen… to silence.That silence could be the Irish elk.That silence could be the dodo.Extinction doesn’t just remove an animal. It removes a voice from the planet forever.During my lifetime, I’ve recorded species whose sounds no longer exist in the wild. The Panamanian golden frog. The northern white rhino. Voices gone within a single generation.Wildlife populations have dropped by 74% in my lifetime. North America has lost 3 billion birds since 1970.After nearly 60 years

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7:12

Southern elephant seal

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/02/04

Standing among an elephant seal colony is like stepping into another language.If a human made these sounds—deep belches, coughing roars, wet grunts—we’d probably turn away in embarrassment. On a Patagonian beach, they are the soundtrack of life itself.This is Península Valdés, on the coast of Argentina, the only place on a continental mainland where southern elephant seals come ashore in vast numbers to breed. Each year, tens of thousands arrive between August and March. The beaches fill with

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5:33

White tailed eagle

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/01/29

I first began recording in Scotland in 1975, the same year the white-tailed eagle began its slow return.Before that, the bird had been hunted, poisoned and persecuted until it vanished from our skies. Its disappearance was not an accident of nature, but a choice made by people, one shot, one stolen egg, one poisoned carcass at a time. By the early twentieth century, the white-tailed eagle was gone.I didn’t see one on the Isle of Rùm during my early visits, but by 1978 they were there. I remember

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5:56

Now versus then

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/01/27

I have always believed that natural sound is one of the clearest barometers of the health of our planet.When an ecosystem is thriving, you can hear it. The layers of birds, insects, frogs, mammals, wind, and water all exist in balance. Sound tells the truth long before statistics do.When human made noise enters that space, the balance shifts.As a young sound recordist, I could sit in the woods or by a stream for hours with little interruption. The only problem was how quickly my tapes filled up

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9:52

The flight of the Arctic tern

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/01/19

One bird, above all others, embodies that sense of planetary connection: the Arctic tern.I have recorded Arctic terns in many places, including the Southern Hemisphere, but encountering them in Shetland feels especially profound. Here, they breed at the northern end of the world before embarking on a journey unlike any other.The Arctic tern holds the record for the longest migration of any animal on Earth. Each year, it travels from its breeding grounds in the high north to the waters surrounding

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4:16

As a child, I was given Ring of Bright Water by Gavin...

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/01/16

That book changed me.It told the story of a man who turned his back on London and the rat race, and chose wilderness instead. He found sanctuary in Scotland, at Camusfearna, where he lived with an otter named Mij. More than a story about an animal, it was a story about escape, solitude, and choosing a life shaped by nature.That book planted a seed. It introduced me to the idea that wild places matter, that silence heals, and that connection with other species can define who we become.I’ve carried a

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4:44

The Great Curassow

The Listener Podcast ·

2026/01/10

Use headphones to hear the low frequencies Deep in the forest at Finca Austria in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, a sound rolled through the trees so low it was almost subliminal. A soft, booming pulse that you don’t so much hear as feel. It stopped me in my tracks. That sound was the giveaway.The Great Curassow.A bird once common across tropical forests, now eliminated from much of its range by hunting. These days, you’re lucky to encounter one at all, unless you’re deep inside protected parks or truly

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6:34

The tiger moth and the Bat.

The Listener Podcast ·

2025/12/29

Most people think night is silent.It isn’t.It’s just happening beyond our hearing.In this podcast, you’ll hear strange clicking sounds that don’t belong to birds or crickets. Those sounds were captured using a bat detector, a piece of equipment that converts ultrasonic frequencies into sounds we can hear.What you’re listening to is an ancient conversation between bats and moths.Bats hunt by sound, throwing pulses into the darkness and reading the echoes as a map of the night. Some moths have evolved

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4:52

Five antbirds. Five forests

The Listener Podcast ·

2025/12/24

(apologies for the sound of my voice) I didn’t find these birds with my eyes.I found them by standing still long enough for the forest to trust me.From Costa Rica to Panama, Mexico, Peru, and deep into the Amazon, I recorded five antbirds living low in the understory, following army ants, waiting patiently for the forest to provide. Their voices are small, intimate, easily lost beneath chainsaws, roads, and noise.These are not loud birds.They don’t compete.They whisper.And that’s the problem.When

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4:57

A prairie chicken lek

The Listener Podcast ·

2025/12/19

If you have ever been lucky enough to witness a prairie chicken lek, you will never forget it.To me, it feels like a Friday night pub back in the UK.All the lads are already there.Standing around.Waiting.They puff themselves up, stamp their feet, and boom out these extraordinary sounds, doing everything they can to impress.Pure confidence.Pure theatre.Then the females arrive, and suddenly it all matters.Each male is saying the same thing.Pick me.I have spent hours lying in the prairie, completely

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1:21

[PREVIEW] EXTINCTION OF QUIET

The Listener Podcast ·

2025/11/26

When I was about eight years old, I stood in a science museum staring up at a hologram of the Irish elk. One word sat beneath it: Extinct.I asked my stepdad what it meant.He said, “It’s gone forever.”At that age, I honestly thought if something was gone, you could just buy another one in a shop.Then I saw a picture of the dodo with the same label, and something in me shifted.As I grew older, and especially as a wildlife sound recordist, the meaning of extinction sank deeper. I realised it isn’t only

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7:25

“What Trophy Hunting Really Looks Like – From Someone...

The Listener Podcast ·

2025/11/19

I’ve spent my life recording wildlife, listening to the world in a way hunters never will. And I’ve also infiltrated the Safari Club International conference five times—rooms I was never meant to walk into.Inside, trophy hunting isn’t sold as “conservation.”It’s sold like a shopping spree.Booths offering “guaranteed tusker,” “exportable lion,” “aged-out leopard.” Price tags instead of respect. Hunters bragging about killing old elephants because they were “on their last molars,” as if that excuses

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5:49

🖤 The Dead Zone at the Mouth of the Mississippi

The Listener Podcast ·

2025/10/03

Every summer, a vast “dead zone” forms where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico — a place where oxygen levels drop so low that marine life simply can’t survive. It’s one of the largest in the world, caused by nutrient runoff from farms and industry thousands of miles upstream. This isn’t just a Gulf problem — it’s a reflection of how our actions ripple far beyond where we live. Fertilizers, waste, and chemicals wash into rivers, then into the sea, turning once-living waters into lifeless

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