Wind Is the Original Radio

By earth.fmScience Health & Fitness Mental Health Kids & Family Education for Kids Nature

Wind Is the Original Radio episodes

September 10, 2025Interview: Serge Bulat
“I welcome every noise around me. No matter what it is: a duck, a fish, a deer farting. [...] You invite it all. And [...] this is [...] when you realize [that] every inch of this planet is occupied and we are sharing and coexisting with other species - [so] how can you ever be alone?”
In this edition of Earth.fm podcast Wind Is the Original Radio, curator Melissa Pons speaks to
Serge Bulat, a multidisciplinary artist whose work - which spans and hybridizes music, exhibitions, immersive games, radio, field recording, and psychological installations - explores the edges of performance, sound, perception, and identity.
Serge is from a Moldovan town divided from Ukraine by a river, with family hailing from both worlds. For this reason, borders are “a prominent subject in [his] work”, which seeks to question topics around unity, differences and similarities, and the utopian aspiration of finding “ways to live in a borderless world”.
Earlier this year, he released Phonomundi: Selected Recordings of Heritage Sites and Traditions 2017-2024, an album which draws upon years of recording, sharing, and contributing to projects, causes, and stories close to his heart. Phonomundi is also about engaging with “our absolutely disastrous path away from respecting our ears and respecting our culture and respecting our environment”.
Against a backdrop of woozy compositions by Serge, featuring nature soundscape recordings, he and Melissa discuss the trials of having a “noisy” mind, which feels like “war in your head” and means that “it’s hard to stop the thinking process” - but which can also lead recordists to “forget about [them]self and [...] start thinking about communities, people that are affected, and [how] that [can be] such an ego drop”.
Serge also talks about how ‘now’ is illusory, and his “weird relationship with time”: “I guess it might be some form of synesthesia, because I feel time; I feel its thickness and I feel its qualities.” The flow of time is “one of the driving forces behind [him] doing what [he’s] doing”, while field recording can provide “the nowest now that there can ever be”. He describes how, after experiencing difficulties with conventional mediation, he managed to develop his own system of meditation around listening, where “time stops [...] [and] you find that serenity and that absolute calmness and, for me, this is when I stop the noise”.
As he says, “We're all pieces of [...] a bigger body and we're [...] made of the same substance. [...] I always struggle to put anything like that in words [...]. It's easier for me to put it in music. [...] This is what music and sound does [...] and words don't.”
Together, Serge and Melissa also address topics including:
The relevance of creative work in the face of the climate catastrophe and alarming political developments across the world - including how music, as a precursor to language, can be “a shortcut [...] to somebody's mind, heart and soul”. While also acknowledging the necessity of “dig[ging] deeper [to] understand the issues [with which] we're living”
Wanting to make work of significance despite “sonic pollution, [...] over-tourism, over-consumerism, weird politics that make zero sense when it comes to preserving [...] or nurturing stuff that matters and makes us us” - and especially in light of the fact that everything we know is at risk of “disappearing just by [the] pressing [of] one button”
Learning to love silence. As Serge says, “We need to reset our hearing. [...] I feel like [silence] makes the ear function better”
How it is possible to “feel and hear” bees’ moods from the frequencies of their buzzing, and how bee therapy (‘apitherapy’) - known since the time of Ancient Egypt - can improve anxiety, depression, and even respiratory conditions. “What bl[ows] my mind [about them]”, says Serge, is their “self-sufficiency, community, [and the way that they can] solv[e] a crisis [by] relying on each other”
Serge’s experience of an immersive exhibition in Kraków, Into the Darkness, which replicates what it’s like to not be able to see, with blind guides providing insights about their lives, and the equivalence of this to animals replying on different senses than our own (such as spiders and vibrations, or snakes using infrared thermal radiation)
The appeal of twilight, “when everything starts becoming blurry” and takes on the quality of a dream, and “the thrill of [darkness] and [the way that] [Serge’s] imagination sometimes takes [him to other] places”.
Listen to the whole interview for all this and much more (including the raw terror of Bob from Twin Peaks!).
Read more on the recent discoveries from the James Webb Telescope.
If you enjoyed this candid and wide-ranging conversation, you can follow Serge on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Apple Music.
1 hr 25 min
May 06, 2025Interview: George Vlad
“Sound is life for me.”
The latest installment of the Earth.fm podcast, Wind Is the Original Radio, finds curator Melissa Pons in conversation with sound recordist and expedition leader George Vlad. You can listen to and read George’s work elsewhere on the site - and you may already have heard recordings of his in high-profile projects such as Dune: Part Two and Mufasa: The Lion King, as well as various documentaries, TV series, podcasts, and audiobooks.
The love of George’s life, as a recordist and collector of sounds, is to be among wildlife sounds, trying to understand them, and getting to share them. Though he confesses to being initially fastidious about avoiding anthropophony, he explains that he has become more understanding and flexible, given how reductive it is to imagine that nature is separate from humans (and vice versa): “We are moving forward, whether we like it or not; progress happens: people need to travel and use power tools.” However, though he has become more open to recording people, he draws a line at combustion engines.
He also shares about his journey from being a sound designer, when he originally saw field recordings as purely “tools or assets”, with no appreciation for the ecosystems they originated from. However, informed by his experience of growing up in the Romanian countryside - which taught him the value of loving nature and of living with it rather than trying to control it - he subsequently came to appreciate and take enjoyment from their beauty.
Additional topics addressed during the episode include:
The “heavy question” of decolonising sound recording and working ethically as a recordist outside of one’s home culture. And, how working respectfully with locals can provide information that, as an outsider, he wouldn’t otherwise be privy to - but also the importance of choosing what to share, considering the importance of certain areas to Indigenous peoples
“Being careful, being mindful, trying not to create tension and problems; this is just being a human, being a nice person, having common sense - it's not just about sound recording.” Where some recordists cause damage, ignore local taboos, or go chasing after animals, George has learned to be more mindful, preferring to work with passive-recording drop-rigs, which are not only easier for him, but less disruptive for wildlife
Fellow recordists who see going back to camp and having a cup of tea as ‘cheating’ and consider suffering to add value to the work. While George has taken part in extreme expeditions (for example, in Sumatra and Gabon), “It was tough; I got a bunch of diseases, and it was painful, and I had to come back and spend two months taking antibiotics and trying to get better - but that didn't make the sound recordings better.” Alternatively, sometimes you're in air-conditioned lodges and being driven around (where it's unsafe to walk) - but that this is equally valid. Being attracted to the 'extremeness' of the experiences is ultimately only a way of making everything about yourself, and “that's just focusing on the wrong aspect; the soundscapes and the sound recordings are more valuable than the effort you put in, or the leeches that suck your blood”
Things that George is afraid of in the field - which turns out to not be a lot, something he puts down to being brought up around cats, which can transmit Toxoplasma gondii to humans: a parasitic infection which reduces fear responses and increases risk-taking. However, he does fear losing his kit on a job
Memorable field-recording experiences, including “sleeping on the edge of an active volcano in Ethiopia, without having taken any precautions” against the silica suspended in its gaseous emissions, which can cut up the lungs like broken glass… On the advise of a geologist who turned out not to have any experience of volcanoes
How to incorporate study and research into a busy practice - not a problem when you “find it hard not to read”, and when research fuels excitement about new destinations. Also: recommendations of books for burgeoning recordists - not just ones on the subject of field recording itself, but useful adjacent ones, like learning to drive off-road, climb trees, or take up photography
How to support conservation - not only in the form of international NGOs like WWF, but also tiny three-person initiatives where donations more appreciably go further (as long as you check that they’re doing what they say they’re doing!). Plus, training others in sound recording, who can potentially continue to record in their local environments when itinerant recordists have moved on
What George would like to see in the future of sound recording - not just for sound recordists to be properly compensated, but for this work to become established as an valued art form in its own right, with more courses, teachers, and the corresponding improvement in people’s ability to listen and pay attention to the world around them.
Plus! The importance of making jam, playing video games, and reading Jules Verne.
George would be delighted if you’d like to engage with his work, so feel free to follow him on his YouTube channel.
1 hr 8 min
April 01, 2025Interview: Nahun Saldaña
“I prefer to live in the fantasy, not in the desperation of the crisis [...], you know?”
This latest episode of Earth.fm’s Wind Is the Original Radio podcast finds site curator Melissa Pons in conversation with Peruvian sound artist and ‘resilient designer’ Nahun Saldaña. In his work, Nahun explores the intersections between soundscapes and sound ecology, especially in relation to climate change and speculative sound future.
Together, they discuss:
The possibility of using soundscapes to drive the awareness that we all depend on the natural world - and even of using them to make companies prioritise caring for the planet rather than solely the pursuit of profit.
The ludicrousness of carbon credits (“Okay, you contaminate, but you pay for the compensation”), but the way that a similar model of mitigation could be applied to noisy manufacturers.
The impact of individualism on people’s awareness (or lack thereof) of the sounds that they make and how those sounds may impact neighbours or the broader community around them
How, in urban spaces, silence has become a new kind of luxury - one denied to people living in lower-income areas
A tendency, within the nature-sound-recording community, to fetishise tragedies in the natural world by recording “the sounds of extinction” or the last examples of particular species, despite this not curtailing those tragedies. Is there an argument for focusing, instead, on “stories of regeneration and flourishing”?
Whether sound technology can be harmful, and, if so, is it “more important to teach the kids to listen”? Nahun describes an instructive visit to a small jungle town where younger generations no longer have the ability to recognise specific sounds, such as the sounds of honey-producing bees - meaning that resources are lost as older members of the community pass away.
The power of deep listening and the notion of “politicians with a capacity for [...] deep listening”, and what groundbreaking policies might emerge from such a (sadly improbable) possibility.
Nahun's one of many projects Escuchadores: a physical structure installed in sound conservation areas conceptualized exclusively to listen and stay in the moment.
We hope that you enjoy this episode, including Nahun’s irresistible exuberance and enthusiasm! You can follow him on Instagram, and check out the work - writing, photography, video, sound art, and ambient music - on his (Spanish-language) website.
1 hr 3 min
March 23, 2025 March Equinox 2025
For this March Equinox we have prepared a 60 minute Listening Party with soundscapes recorded in March from the North to the South Hemisphere. We're celebrating the season's transition and we want to invite you to reflect on how we can better accommodate our lives to our surrounding environment.
Tracklist:
01:58 Midnight Forest Frogs - Andy Martin
09:01 Western Capercaillie Makes Vocalizations in Early Spring - Andrus Kannel
12:49 Early Spring Thunderstorm in Beech Forest - Ivo Vicic
25:57 Hippopotamoes Preparing for the Night - Sounding Wild
39:36 Dawn Chorus is Saroluk - Enis Çakar
44:00 RDC Nightwalk in Rainforest - Owl - Gina Lo
47:02 Early Autumn Bushland Dawn near the Coorong - Khristos Nizamis
52:56 Tiny Little River - Verónica Cerrotta
56:24 Between Tree Branches - Melissa Pons
57:22: Here in There - Melissa Pons
You can listen to all of these soundscapes on our free mobile app at https://Earth.FM available for iOS and Android.
1 hr
March 04, 2025Interview: Andy Martin pt.2
“I don't feel like nature is somehow healing me - I feel as if my body is remembering what it's supposed to be like.”
Earth.fm’s Wind Is the Original Radio podcast is pleased to share the second part of curator Melissa Pons’ conversation with sound designer and field recordist Andy Martin. (You can find part one here.)
Here, in another thought-provoking instalment, Andy shares his thoughts about deep listening, questioning (in part because of the varied ways in which it is defined) the difference from just… listening.
In the field, Andy “describe[s] [him]self as a witness”, of anything from “the trickle of water to hummingbirds which are out to kill each other” - but he refutes the idea of there being any “inherent meaning in a soundscape; it just is; it just exists”. Where deep listening often aspires to finding meaning or making a connection - “an intentional beauty or a message within the soundscape” - he asserts his conviction that there are no such intentions, beyond those of individual wildlife.
“I can listen in wonder and awe”, but “there's nothing there that is a meaningful, special interaction for me; it is just life existing. If we're looking for a deeper connection, a deep meaning within the soundscape [...] we're missing the reality of what's there, and we're trying to put our own feelings, our own belief systems onto that reality - and that's not my job. [...] My job is to listen and bring forth.” What Andy sees as people’s misinterpretations of the natural world overriding the reality means that, “The moment I hear someone describe a dawn chorus as an outpouring of joy, they've lost me. Because that's what it sounds like to us - but that's not necessarily what it is.”
Further topics discussed in this episode include:
The idea that, by entering other beings’ habitats, uninvited, recordists make themselves into “voyeur[s]”: “To imagine that I am not making a disruption when I go into that space [...] I think is very foolish” - one of the benefits of rolling out hundreds of metres of mic cables to listen while recording (another being the avoidance of self-noise: “I sniffle, I cough, I shuffle - I make a lot of noise”)
The difference between American robins’ dawn and dusk calls and whinnies
The close evolutionary relationship between birds, dinosaurs, and crocodilians - plus, a hair-raising story of being alone in a Louisiana swamp, hearing alligators booming in the twilight and legging it for his car. (Really, who can blame him?)
Hearing soundscapes in those fog-shrouded swamps of the Atchafalaya Basin change over course of a year and noting the different times at which different species of frogs and insects sing, and the different frequencies in which they do so: Bernie Krause's acoustic niche theory in action
The potential selfishness of making nature recordings, and whether it's necessary to assign a 'higher cause' to justify making doing so in ways that may exoticize the environments in which they are made
Acknowledging the unlikeliness “that someone'll hear [his] recordings and dedicate themselves to some sort of ecological practice”... but also acknowledging the value of influencing people on a smaller scale - including himself. Though Andy states that he makes recordings for the enjoyment of hearing the more-than-human beings’ comings and goings, he also notes that listening to them has changed his own behaviour to the extent of affecting how he brought up his daughter
The privilege of being involved in the Giving Contest organised with George Vlad and Thomas Rex Beverly: a call for donations for environmental causes, with nature sound recording bundles as prizes
The way that spaces like the Amazon rainforest, which we think of as untouched wilderness, were affected by Indigenous, pre-colonial farming and water management: places where humans have in fact influenced ecosystems for thousands of years. More modern examples include the American bullfrogs which are considered ubiquitous, but which were limited to the eastern half of North America before being bred as a cheap protein source during the Gold Rush, and ultimately released into the wild
The possibility of humanity having positive impacts on the natural world - even if making that change may be a long time coming.
We hope that you enjoy this episode. If you’d like to connect with Andy, you can do so on LinkedIn and Instagram and listen to various recordings and other interviews here.
2 hr 8 min
February 04, 2025Interview: Andy Martin pt. 1
In this episode of Earth.fm’s Earth Is the Original Radio podcast - the first of a two-parter! - the site’s curator, Melissa Pons has a wide-ranging conversation with sound designer and field recordist Andy Martin.
The insightful and granular conversation explored the following topics:
Andy’s relationship with sound throughout his life and career, and what paths led to him dedicating himself to nature field recordings - taking in childhood illness, a love of the Star Wars score, involuntary mimicking of the sounds around him, and a desire for escape
Flirtations with piano, violin, and saxophone, which led to music school - where Andy experienced a shift from sound being something he played and listened to actively thinking about it as something with the power to affect the world via feelings and emotions
Stumbling from film sound design into video games - different ways of using sound to tell a story
How being a stay-at-home father for three years allowed him to experiencing the world via his young daughter's curiosity, and how his desire to learn about the place of sound grew alongside his daughter
Starting to record wildlife for computer games, but initially seeing these sounds as “assets”
‘Quietness’ and ‘silence’ and what people really mean when they search for places that offer these things. And what sites without industrial noise, inhabited by more-than-human life, have brought to Andy
A nature field recordist's identity and its contradictions in a capitalistic system and in the context of ‘content creation’.
How ADHD feels to Andy, and how his experience of the disorder affects his practice and his life - maybe chaotically, maybe beautifully
Also: crows!
Listen out for part two of the conversation, which will be released soon!
Also, below are all of the references mentioned during this episode:
Bernie Krause's acoustic niche hypothesis: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269278107_The_Niche_Hypothesis_A_virtual_symphony_of_animal_sounds_the_origins_of_musical_expression_and_the_health_of_habitats
Bernie Krause's book, The Great Animal Orchestra: https://eshop.fondationcartier.com/en/products/bernie-krause-and-united-visual-artists-the-great-animal-orchestra
Martyn Stewart: https://www.thelisteningplanet.com/alifeinsoundpodcast
Gordon Hempton's One Square Inch of Silence: https://onesquareinch.org/
Andy’s official website: https://soundeziner.com/
Andy's SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/soundeziner
And you can connect with Andy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymartinnaturesound/ and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andymartinnaturesound/.
1 hr 52 min
January 07, 2025 Interview: Chris Treviño
A new turn around the sun and a new episode, this month’s guest being Chris Treviño, a field recordist and sound designer from Michigan with a background in anthropology and currently pursuing a Masters in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology, focusing on ways of knowing his own town through its sound across its history.
We’re talking about some aspects of sound as heritage and memory as well as its cultural value in which Chris conceptualizes the notion of sonic time capsule, how we humans relate to sound in different contexts and throughout time, and we also talk about his more recent project in the Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, where Chris spent almost two weeks recording while traversing the island by foot.
Please find below all the references mentioned during our conversation:
Video games composers: Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu (the Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy series)
Steven Feld - Voices From the Rainforest; the Kaluli people
UNESCO heritage designations: https://www.unesco.org/en/lists-designations
The Greek practice of the memory palace: https://artofmemory.com/blog/how-to-build-a-memory-palace/
Antônio Bispo dos Santos: https://futuress.org/community/antonio/
The Tonebenders Podcast episode with Chris: https://tonebenderspodcast.com/277-field-recording-for-the-national-parks-service-with-chris-trevino/
Isle Royale NP: https://www.nps.gov/isro/index.htm
Chris Treviño SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/chrisatrevino
Listen to the full recording of ‘Old Man and Grandson Watch Trains’: https://soundcloud.com/chrisatrevino/old-man-and-grandson-watch-trains
Chris’ official website: https://www.chrisatrevino.com/Connect with Chris on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisatrevino and on X https://x.com/ChrisATrevino
1 hr 21 min
December 03, 2024 Interview: Jo Kennedy
Say hello to December with this month's episode, in which we welcome creative sound artist Jo Kennedy, co-director of Yorkshire Sound Women Network and co-producer of the Nature Tripping podcast!.
Jo is a field recordist, sound designer, and audio producer who focuses on environmental and ecological projects. Together, we discuss Jo's path between environment and sound;, what listening - whether to anthropogenic sounds or predominantly natural ones - can potentially reveal; the power of novelty and curiosity in sound; rewilded soundscapes; graveyards; and more.
It isn’t necessary to experience pristine natural environments in order to fulfil our potential for connecting with other living beings, whatever they may be, and we might find small patches of land near us which are very special.
In addition, Jo and Cathy's podcast, - Nature Tripping - https://www.jokennedysound.com/naturetripping -, is wholeheartedly recommended, as is the article mentioned in the episode: ‘"Initiating Ecological Change Through Sound Art – a Review and Short Manifesto" - https://www.jokennedysound.com/blog/initiating-ecological-change-through-sound-art.
And see what the Yorkshire Sound Women Network is all about and how you can get involved - https://yorkshiresoundwomen.com/
Thank you, Jo, for the wonderful conversation!
1 hr 10 min
November 05, 2024 Interview: David de la Haye
Hello and welcome back to the Wind Is the Original Radio podcast! We have been longing to return and are so happy to kick-start this new phase with David de la Haye, an award-winning ecological sound artist focusing on underwater aquatic environments.
This episode is a fun conversation - both uncanny and down-to-earth - about listening to underwater sounds and the fascinating experience of recording them. Plus, collaborating to create music from his field recordings and some necessary gear talk.
David’s work is informed by his experience as a bassist, composer, and music technician, and by the process of cooperation with other musicians. He shares about how these processes go for some of his latest projects, and about the value of gathering people to make music.Learn more about David and his work on his website, https://daviddelahaye.co.uk/, and consider supporting him on bandcamp: https://daviddelahaye.bandcamp.com/.
53 min
October 18, 2024 Java’s Last Rainforest
Recorded in the misty montane rainforest of Gunung Halimun National Park, this recording features subtle birdsong and the sounds of a distant mountain river. This location is one of the last truly wild places on the island of Java and home to a host of unique wildlife.
Recorded by Marc Anderson at the Gunung Halimun National Park, Java, Indonesia
30 min