One of the themes in my new novel, “The Sound of Life,” is interspecies communication—not in a Doctor Doolittle kind of way—that’s silly—but in a more fundamental way, using protocols that involve far more listening on our part than speaking.

The ability to communicate with other species has long been a dream among scientists, although as I observed in an earlier Podcast episode, we might not be pleased with what other species have to say to us. But that aside, I find it pretty exciting that we’re on the bleeding edge of being able to engage in a form of two-way communication with other species. So, in this episode, I want to tell you a bit about where we are, and why 2026 is widely believed to be the year we make contact.