Secret Sounds of Ponds and Other Animal Music with Professor David Rothenberg, NJ Institute of Technology

About this episode

The episode explores the musical sounds of ponds and the insights of Dr. David Rothenberg on animal music.

Who knew that ponds make music? To the eye and ears, they seem silent and tranquil—except at night when, maybe, choruses of frogs serenade listeners. But ponds are much noisier than that: you have to be very quiet and have the right equipment to really hear what’s going on. And there is a lot going on: both the critters and the plants speak out. Indeed, nature is full of sounds, many of them musical and, quite possible, the forerunners of human music. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. David Rothenberg, scholar, author, musician and composer and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology whose focus is on animal sounds as music. We talk about his most recent book, Secret Sounds of Ponds, for which Rothenberg tossed a microphone into ponds and heard “an entirely new world, a realm of the unexpected and stirring rhythms and tones of some of the smallest and loudest creatures on Earth.”

People in this episode

Host: Ronnie Lipschutz

Guest: David Rothenberg

Topics covered

• animal sounds
• music
• pond ecology
• nature
• philosophy
• environmental science

Keywords

• ponds
• animal music
• frogs
• nature sounds
• David Rothenberg
• ecology
• philosophy of music

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: New Jersey Institute of Technology

Books & works: Secret Sounds of Ponds

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