When the world stopped in 2020, cellist Yo-Yo Ma started thinking about how music can reconnect people to nature. In this limited podcast series, Yo-Yo travels around the country to make music and meet places where people who have deep connections to the earth and begins to make music.  Host Ana González joins him to uncover stories of the ways that culture binds us to nature, from Maine to Appalachia and Hawaii. 

The result is a seven-episode series that fuses music, personal narratives, and local histories from across the United States. We travel into the world's largest cave to hear the Louisville symphony orchestra perform. In Hawai‘i, an elder says her “chants are our contribution to the human orchestra of the world.” And the Wabanaki teach us about their duty to welcome the sun each day in Maine. For Yo-Yo Ma, who has spent most of his career indoors, a connection to the natural world is “what doesn’t exist in my life, that I know is missing.”  Our Common Nature helps to bridge the gap – for Yo-Yo and for all of us.  

Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings.