Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, host of this show,

an executive editor of Emergence Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the

Coast Miwok people in present-day Marin County. Each week, we feature interviews, stories, poetry, and author-narrated essays,

exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

From the very first days of the universe, sound wove a new note into the fabric of creation.

A call into the silence, sound was and continues to be an instrument of connection.

This week, as we celebrate Earth Week, we're sharing one of our most cherished audio experiences,

when the Earth started to sing by biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell.

Hearing three billion years of our planet's sound evolution in the trills, bugles, clicks,

and pulses of life around him.

David shares the connection to both deep time and the more than human world that can be found

when we tune into the Earth's orchestra.

As he invites us into auditory landscapes

across time and space,

he opens our senses to the joy and wonder of sound. I recommend popping

on a good pair of headphones as you immerse yourself in this story of sound. Sound is more ancient than planet Earth, more ancient even than atoms.

13 billion years ago, the first sound waves pulsed through the hot plasma of the early cosmos.

At that time, the universe was a compact blazing mire of protons and electrons.

Waves of high and low pressure seeed through this plasma, the first sound waves in the cosmos.

These waves seeded the first stars.

The peaks of the waves became clusters of atoms that slowly drew more matter into themselves

eventually forming stars and galaxies.

...