Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature (Bioneers)

If people are to find creative ways of living together and healing both culture and nature, the awakening of individual genius may be the deepest and most imaginative way to approach the seemingly impossible tasks that face contemporary cultures. Renowned storyteller, performer, author, activist and scholar Michael Meade weaves threads of timeless wisdom traditions into myths for today’s global crisis. Meade says each of us is woven into the soul of the world, and we’re uniquely needed at this mythic moment to become active agents in the co-creation, re-creation and re-imagination of culture and nature. With: Michael Meade and John Densmore. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

How do we change the story of corrosive racial inequity? First, we have to understand the stories we tell ourselves. In this program, racial justice innovators john a. powell and Heather McGhee show how empathy, honesty and the recognition of our common humanity can change the story to bridge the racial divides tearing humanity and the Earth apart. john a. powell is the Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. His latest book is: Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society. Watch his keynote from the 2017 Bioneers Conference: https://bioneers.org/john-a-powell-co-creating-alternative-spaces-to-heal-bioneers-2017/ Heather McGhee, distinguished senior fellow and former president of Demos, is an award-winning thought leader on the national stage whose writing and research appear in numerous outlets, including The New York Times and The Nation. Her latest book is The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Watch her keynote from the 2017 Bioneers Conference: https://bioneers.org/heather-mcghee-a-new-we-the-people-for-a-sustainable-future/ This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history. It represented a literal watershed moment; unprecedented co-equal decision-making between the tribes and their historical nemesis – the US government. Once complete in 2024, the project will liberate the Klamath river and several tributaries to once again run free across 400-miles from Oregon through California and into the Pacific Ocean. Featuring Sammy Gensaw (Yurok) is the Founding Director of the Ancestral Guard, Artist, Yurok Language Speaker, Singer, Writer, Cultural/Political/Environmental Activist, Regalia Maker, Mediator, Youth Leader & Fisherman. Craig Tucker has 20+ years of advocacy and activism experience, especially working with tribal members, fishermen and farmers in the Klamath Basin on dam removal, traditional fire management, gold mining, and water policy, and is the founder and Principal of Suits and Signs Consulting. Resources Indigenous Forum – Undam the Klamath! How Tribes Led the Largest River Restoration Project in US History | Bioneers 2023 Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

At the same time the Great Recession has inflicted enormous pain and suffering, it has also caused people to take a deeper look at what's really important in our lives. Many are finding that time is not money: time is far more valuable. The acclaimed filmmakers and social entrepreneurs Annie Leonard (The Story of Stuff) and John de Graaf (Seattle Area Happiness Initiative) pop the Big Question: What's the economy for, anyway? Is it a voracious cycle of perpetual growth and more stuff? Or can we create growth within the natural limits of the planet to produce sufficiency, a high quality of life and real happiness?!

The profit-hungry agribusiness empire of the 20th century institutionalized farming practices that continue to degrade soils across the U.S. and globally. We face a fork in the road: collapse or regeneration? The good news is that we know what we need to begin an agricultural and ecological renaissance – a literal rebirth.  Biologist Anne Biklé and geologist David Montgomery share one of the good news stories that show how the solutions residing in nature surpass our conception of what’s even possible.

Although colonial systems of oppression have radically damaged relationships between tribal communities and their traditional lands, a new generation of First Nations activists is working to restore those connections and safeguard Indigenous identity for future generations. They’re protecting traditional territories and sacred sites from harm, and renewing Indigenous land stewardship. With: Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Valentin Lopez, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, and Cara Romero, from the Mohave-based Chemehuevi Tribe.

Some of the best minds on the planet are busy cataloguing possible solutions to the crisis of climate chaos. Scientists, entrepreneurs and educators on technology’s cutting edge offer a broad array of bio-based solutions that are already working to transition us to a truly sustainable civilization. Biomimics Janine Benyus, Stephan Dewar, David Orr and Jay Harman offer a smorgasbord of startling solutions based on nature’s genius.

After decades of the repression and demonization of these substances, research trials around the country have been achieving remarkable results that validate the profound healing potential of psychedelics such as psilocybin and MDMA. Mounting evidence suggests they positively address such varied conditions as end-of-life anxiety, PTSD, and cluster headaches. Hosted by J.P. Harpignies, Bioneers Conference Associate Producer. With: Robert Barnhart, filmmaker of A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin; Philip Wolfson, M.D., leading MDMA researcher; Mitch Schultz, director of the film DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Recorded Saturday, October 17, 2015 at the National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.

Contemporary Western fire science is integrating what Indigenous Peoples discovered over thousands of years of observation, and trial and error: fire is key to optimizing forest vitality and biodiversity. The merging of these two ways of knowing could signal the end to our misguided policy of fire suppression, and the beginning of fire-resilient communities with a new relationship to one of nature’s most elemental and fearful forces. With fire ecologists Chad Hanson and Frank Kanawha Lake. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

What lies behind the fascination to tinker with the building blocks of life? Kenny Ausubel and Andrew Kimbrell shed light on the disturbing genetic engineering debate and activist Luke Anderson reports from the successful campaign that has derailed the spread of "biological pollution" in Great Britain and Europe.

In Western civilization, human beings are considered the exceptional species and uniquely intelligent. Yet science is consistently revealing our intimate biological kinship with all species, especially the primates with whom we share 99% of our DNA. The breakthrough primatologist researchers Roger and Deborah Fouts take us on their amazing journey with chimpanzees that shows that, not only are people animals, but animals seem to be people too. Featuring Roger and Deborah Fouts co-founded and directed the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) at Central Washington University. CHCI facilitated research on primate communication, advocated for chimpanzee conservation, and served as a sanctuary for chimpanzees from 1993-2013. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast. Music co-written by the Baka Forest People of Cameroon and Baka Beyond from the album East to West. All royalties from Baka compositions and performances go to Baka Forest People, through the charity Global Music Exchange. Find out more at globalmusicexchange.org. Additional music was made available by Sounds True, at SoundsTrue.com.

As a backlash against LGBTQ rights escalates into an authoritarian crusade, acclaimed author and queer activist Taylor Brorby asks how we can still be fighting this battle? As a writer addressing the fossil fuel industry’s acceleration in the midst of climate chaos, Taylor is forced to choose between the existential crises of the assaults on nature and on LGBTQ people. It’s all connected, he says, as he seeks to reconcile nature, culture, diversity and belonging.

There are periods when history comes to a boil – when powerful forces of both destruction and creation result in massive social change. In 2020, the Black Lives Matter Movement emerged as the biggest protest movement in American history, and resounded worldwide. Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, tells the story of the birth of this powerful movement for racial justice, and shares her vision of a world where black people are actually free, a world that we all deserve to live in.

A quiet renaissance of serious medical research has once again arisen to study the therapeutic benefits of LSD and other psychedelics, including overcoming addiction and depression, and easing the existential terror of terminal illness. In this program, acclaimed journalist Michael Pollan shares a travelogue of his reportorial and personal journey with psychedelics. He slips through the rabbit hole into the mystery of consciousness itself, into the indivisible oneness of people and nature, and asks: could the transformational healing that psychedelics can bring on the personal ego level translate into cultural healing that could address the greatest issues of our time? This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast. Resources Video of Michael Pollan's keynote speech at the Bioneers 2018 Video of Plant Intelligence and Human Consciousness panel featuring Michael Poll at Bioneers 2018

If the rate of destruction doesn’t change, by the year 2020 most of the Amazon ecosystem – the lungs of the planet - will be destroyed or irreparably damaged. But not if these visionary leaders can help it. Amazon Watch founder Atossa Soltani has supported local Indigenous peoples to protect the rainforest and their lifeways. Legendary rainforest champion Marina Silva, Brazil’s past Minister of the Environment and Presidential candidate, offers deep wisdom and vision.

To have any chance of success, highly creative, collaborative uses of new forms of digital media must be a cornerstone of any strategy for progressive social and environmental movements. Four leading innovators in this domain share their insights. Hosted by Matthew Monahan, Namaste Foundation. With: Ben Knight, co-founder of Loomio; Edward West, co-founder of Impact Hub Oakland and Hylo social network; Ingrid Sanders, founder of PopExpert, a crowd-sourced, community-driven platform.

Writer, naturalist and activist Terry Tempest Williams asks “Can we love ourselves, each other and the Earth enough to change?” She invokes our deepest humanity to honor and protect the wilderness that’s the cauldron of evolution – and of our own imagination. “Our power lies in the love of our homelands,” she tells us in this eloquent, heartfelt tour-de-force, and protecting the wild requires bringing democracy home. Featuring Terry Tempest Williams, one of the greatest living authors from the American West, is also a longtime award-winning conservationist and activist, who has taken on, among other issues, nuclear testing, the Iraq War, the neglect of women’s health, and the destruction of nature, especially in her beloved “Red Rock” region of her native Utah and in Alaska. Find out more about Terry Tempest Williams and how you can engage with her campaigns and efforts by visiting her website. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Renowned storyteller, performer, author, activist and scholar Michael Meade weaves threads of timeless wisdom traditions into myths for today’s global crisis. Meade says each of us is woven into the soul of the world, and we’re uniquely needed at this mythic moment to become active agents in the co-creation, re-creation and re-imagination of culture and nature. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Could Los Angeles stop draining water from the Colorado River and the Sacramento Delta to become self-sufficient? That's a question that Andy Lipkis and his organization Tree People are tackling in an unprecedented alliance with public works agencies. Their work proves that the more we learn about how ecosystems operate, the more sustainably we can design our cities.

On his deathbed Henry David Thoreau said his only regret was being too well behaved. Julia Butterfly Hill, Diane Wilson and Terri Swearingen, three of the most imaginative, inspiring and courageous direct action heroines of our era share their experiences and show us how courage and commitment can stop mountains from being moved.

At the core of our civilizational breakdown is an extractive economy that wastes both nature and people, at the same time it is Hoovering extreme wealth up to the billionaire class. But with breakdown comes breakthrough. Professor Manuel Pastor believes we’re living through a moment of profound transformation. It will come down to what we do – or don’t do – at this moment of radical change. In this episode, we hear from Pastor on how shocks to the system are precipitating a great awakening and growing movements to transform the economy to our economy. Featuring Manuel Pastor, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at USC and Director of its Equity Research Institute, has long been one of the most important scholars and activists working on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He has held many prominent academic posts, won countless prestigious awards and fellowships for his activism and scholarship, and is the author and co-author of many important, highly influential tomes. Resources Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter | 2021 Book by Manuel Pastor and Chris Benner SolidarityEconomics.org | Joint Project of the Equity Research Center (ERI) at the University of Southern California and the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz Manuel Pastor – Solidarity Economics: Mutuality, Movements and Momentum | 2021 Bioneers Keynote Address Solidarity Economics: Our Economy, Our Planet, Our Movements | 2021 Bioneers Panel Bioneers Reader: Our Economic Future | Free eBook This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Aligning business with biology, disruptive design uses systems thinking to create models that show what “good” really looks like. Two winners of the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award—visionary architect Jason McLennan of the acclaimed Living Building Challenge and entrepreneur Cheryl Dahle of The Future of Fish—demonstrate breakthrough systems designs that can transform major industries, create a healthy sustainable environment and make life beautiful and fun. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

As climate chaos and obscene inequality ravage people and planet, a new generation of visionaries is emerging to demand a bold solution: a Green New Deal. Is it a remedy that can actually meet the magnitude and urgency of this turning point in the human enterprise? With the late Tom Hayden, lifelong activist and politician, and Demond Drummer of Policy Link.

Cuba developed, out of necessity, the most organic, sustainable agricultural system of any country. Is that model replicable in other parts of the world, or is it now likely to be overrun by industrial farming as ironically the easing of tensions with the U.S. opens the island up to the influx of capital and multinational corporate plutocrats? What can we learn from Cuba’s food system, and what are the risks to Cuban food security and sovereignty as its economic isolation ends? With: Kevin Danaher, co-founder of Global Exchange and FairTradeUSA; Greg Watson, former Massachusetts Secretary of Agriculture; Anuradha Mittal, founder and Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

In the face of global climate disruption, two billion people worldwide will be challenged by too much water, and nearly another two billion by not enough. When you fight nature, you lose, says Henk Ovink, a designer, the Principal of Rebuild by Design, and the first ever Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He’s dramatically demonstrating on large scales how to shift our relationship to nature and to culture – and climate-proof our cities and coasts. Featuring, Henk Ovink, the first Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. “Worldwide, water is the connecting issue, the number one global risk and the opportunity for comprehensive cultural change.” Ovink is Principal of Rebuild by Design and was Senior Advisor to the former US Presidential Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task. He was both Acting Director General of Spatial Planning and Water Affairs and Director National Spatial Planning for the Netherlands. Learn more about Henk Ovink and his work by visiting Rebuild by Design. Watch the Bioneers Conference talk from which some of the content in this episode was taken from. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Are plants intelligent? If we knew their language what might they tell us? Potawatomi Indigenous ecologist and author Robin Kimmerer and evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano merge Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Western science for a surprising trip into the minds of mosses and chili seeds and the songs of corn. They agree what we really need today is a revolution in values, an “Honorable Harvest” of gratitude and reciprocity with our plant kin.

The idea that a river or other natural feature is a living being, imbued with the right to live and thrive is nothing new to Indigenous Peoples around the world. In this episode with Matriarch Casey Camp-Horinek from the Ponca Nation, we talk about how a burgeoning indigenous-led Rights of Nature movement has the potential to protect ecosystems from destruction by granting legal rights to nature itself, and how many tribes are uniquely positioned for leadership to institute and uphold the Rights of Nature because of their sovereign legal status. This episode features collage artwork by Indigenous artist, Mer Young. For more information and transcript, visit the episode page: https://bioneers.org/indigenize-the-law-tribal-rights-of-nature-movements-casey-camp-horinek-1/ Featuring: Casey Camp-Horinek, a tribal Councilwoman of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma and Hereditary Drumkeeper of its Womens’ Scalp Dance Society, Elder and Matriarch, is also an Emmy award winning actress, author, and an internationally renowned, longtime Native and Human Rights and Environmental Justice activist. She led efforts for the Ponca tribe to adopt a Rights of Nature Statute and pass a moratorium on fracking on its territory, and has traveled and spoken around the world. This is an episode of Indigeneity Conversations, a podcast series that features deep and engaging conversations with Native culture bearers, scholars, movement leaders, and non-Native allies on the most important issues and solutions in Indian Country. Bringing Indigenous voices to global conversations. Visit the Indigeneity Conversations homepage to learn more. Resources: Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program Rights of Nature Initiative Rights of Nature Bioneers Media Hub Casey Camp-Horinek: Aligning Human Law with Natural Law | 2019 Bioneers Conference Keynote Address Credits: Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Co-Hosts and Producers: Cara Romero and Alexis Bunten Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Associate Producer and Program Engineer: Emily Harris Consulting Producer: Teo Grossman Studio Engineers: Brandon Pinard and Theo Badashi Tech Support: Tyson Russell Web Design: Megan Howe Mer Young creates the series collage artwork.

Dr. Shane Gero, a visionary marine biologist, is angling to crack the code of sperm whale communication. His mind-bending research is transforming what we thought we knew about these ancient leviathans. It’s calling on us to embrace the reality that perhaps we’ve long suspected: Sperm whales are living meaningful, intelligent and complex lives whose cultures suggest that whales are people too. What can whale culture teach us, and can deep listening help us learn to coexist respectfully in kinship with these guardians of the deep? Featuring Shane Gero, Ph.D., is a Canadian whale biologist, Scientist-in-Residence at Ottawa’s Carleton University, and a National Geographic Explorer. He is the founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project and the Biology Lead for Project CETI. His science appears in numerous magazines, books, and television; and most recently was the basis for the Emmy Award winning series, Secrets of the Whales. Learn more at shanegero.com. Resources Shane Gero – Preserving Animal Cultures: Lessons from Whale Wisdom | Bioneers 2023 Keynote Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Teo Grossman and Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Special Engineering Support: Eddie Haehl at KZYX

How are donors leveraging effective change beyond traditional pathways and norms? From shareholder activism to investment strategies and disinvestment campaigns, explore how foundations can be reshaped to be far more effective. Hosted by Jen Sokolove, Program Director, Compton Foundation. With: Lauren Embrey, President/CEO, Embrey Family Foundation; Tom Van Dyck, Senior Vice President and Financial Consultant, SRI Wealth Management Group at RBC Wealth Management; Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Senior Director of Membership & Communications, Women Donors Network; Kristin Hull, CEO, Nia Global Solutions. Recorded Friday, October 17, 2014 at the national Bioneers Summit Conference in San Rafael, California.

Today’s corporate, capitalist economy is radically unequal, ecologically unsustainable, and embedded in recurring boom-and-bust cycles of crisis. Not surprisingly, people are looking for alternatives. What if, instead of tweaking the system to reduce the damage, we reorganized entirely so that both local and national economies produced better outcomes for people, communities and the planet in the first place?  That’s the essence of community wealth building, the focus of this episode with guest host Laura Flanders, featuring Democracy Collaborative Distinguished Senior Fellow, Marjorie Kelly; Preston City Council Member, Matthew Brown in the UK; and community wealth building adviser to the Scottish Government, Neil McInroy. This episode is part 2 of a 4-part series exploring how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing their assets, anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people – from land to money and finance. Explore the full series here. Resources Democracy Collaborative Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and The Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today's Crises Action Guide for Advancing Community Wealth Building in the United States | Democracy Collaborative Gar Alperovitz – Replacing Corporate Capitalism: Why We Need a Next System | Bioneers 2018 Keynote Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reader Guest Host Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of Laura Flanders & Friends, which airs on PBS stations nationwide. She is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Media Center. Credits This series is co-produced by Bioneers and Laura Flanders & Friends Laura Flanders & Friends Producers: Laura Flanders and Abigail Handel Production Assistance: Jeannie Hopper and David Neumann Bioneers Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Youth movements are rising to restore people and planet. De’Anthony Jones, a former President of the Environmental Students Organization at Sacramento State, Chloe Maxmin, co-founder of Divest Harvard, and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, hip-hop artist and Youth Director of Earth Guardians, say there’s no better time to be born than now because this generation gets to rewrite history. It could be known as the generation that brought forth a healthy, just, sustainable world for every generation to come. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

In this fascinating conversation, author and anthropologist Wade Davis and ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison delve into the fascinating human relationship to consciousness altering plants, delving into the use of coffee, cacao, peyote, ayahuasca, and psilocybin by ancient and contemporary peoples, and the relevance these relationships may have for current human predicaments.

Just like our bodies, nature has a profound capacity for healing and self-repair. Filmmaker-turned-ecological-restorer John Liu shifted from documenting China's massive environmental and societal upheavals to filming a groundbreaking, large-scale ecosystem restoration cum local economic renewal. Prioritizing nature's ecological functions above producing goods and services, the groundbreaking work is spreading to other nations, with Liu as a global ambassador of dramatic ecosystem restoration wonders.

First Peoples have long used key sacred plants as powerful healing tools and to communicate with the "mind of nature." In this truly unique session Bioneers associate producer and editor of Visionary Plant Consciousness J.P. Harpignies and ethnobotanist/artist Kat Harrison hosted deeply experienced practitioners of sacred plant traditions from the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, including Mazatec Elder Julieta Casimiro; Maria Alice Campos Freire, a Madrinha in Brazil's Santo Daime Church; traditional Cheyenne dance leader, sculptress and writer Margaret Behan Red Spider Woman; and Bernadette Rebienot, Omyene healer and master of the lboga Bwiti Rite.

Although colonial systems of oppression have radically damaged relationships between tribal communities and their traditional lands, a new generation of First Nations activists is working to restore those connections and safeguard Indigenous identity for future generations. They’re protecting traditional territories and sacred sites from harm, and renewing Indigenous land stewardship. With: Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Valentin Lopez, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, and Cara Romero, from the Mohave-based Chemehuevi Tribe.

We are told that our personal health is our individual responsibility based on our own choices. Yet, the biological truth is that human health is dependent upon the health of nature’s ecosystems and our social structures. Decisions that negatively affect these larger systems and eventually affect us are made without our consent as citizens and, often, without our knowledge. Dr. Rupa Marya, Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco, and Faculty Director of the Do No Harm Coalition, says “social medicine” means dismantling harmful social structures that directly lead to poor health outcomes, and building new structures that promote health and healing. Learn more about Rupa Marya and her work here.

Activists, scientists and grassroots groups are leveraging new technology and collaborative networks to accurately monitor the quality of the environment, expose governmental and corporate abuses, and enable large-scale ecological research to understand the web of life in the age of climate disruption. Hosted by Teo Grossman, Bioneers Director of Strategic Network Initiatives. With: Severine v T Fleming, Farm Hack; Shannon Dosemagen, founder/President, New Orleans-based Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science; Brian Haggerty, co-designer, USA National Phenology Network, a multisectoral climate change research program using citizen scientists to monitor seasonal behavior of U.S. flora and fauna.

Nature’s Genius is a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. For all the talk about the Age of Information, what we’re really entering is the Age of Nature. As we face the reality that, as humans, we have the capacity to destroy the conditions conducive to life, avoiding this fate requires a radical change in our relationship to nature, and how we view it. Looking to nature to heal nature, and ourselves, is essential.  Traditional Indigenous wisdom and modern science show us that everything is connected and that the solutions we need are present in the sentient symphony of life. We can learn from the time-tested principles, processes, and dynamics that have allowed living systems to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution.  In this enlightening series, we visit with scientists, ecologists, Indigenous practitioners of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, community organizers, and authors reporting from the frontlines of ecological restoration. They explore the intelligence inherent in nature and show us how to model human organization on living systems. Guests featured in the series include: Jeannette Armstrong - Co-Founder, Enwokin Centre; Brock Dolman - Co-Founder and Program Director, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center; Erica Gies - Author and Journalist; Brett KenCairn - Founding Director of Center for Regenerative Solutions; Toby Kiers - Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Co-Founder of SPUN; Kate Lundquist - Water Institute Co-Director, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center; Samira Malone - Urban Forestry Program Manager, Urban Sustainability Directors Network; Teresa Ryan - Teaching and Learning Fellow, Forest and Conservation Sciences Dept., Univ. of British Columbia; Merlin Sheldrake - Biologist and Author; Suzanne Simard - Author and Prof. of Forest Ecology, Univ. of British Columbia; Rowen White - Seedkeeper/Farmer and Author from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel Produced by Cathy Edwards Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Post Production Assistants: Monica Lopez and Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

In this episode, award-winning lawyer and climate justice organizer Colette Pichon-Battle lays out a bold vision for a new organizing project designed to model bioregional democratic climate action. The aim is to transform the Gulf South and Appalachia away from the lethal matrix of fossil fuel extraction and extractive economics. Instead, the regional vision is for a regenerative future of clean energy democracy, and an equitable, inclusive economy. Featuring Colette Pichon Battle, a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, is an award-winning lawyer and prominent climate justice organizer. After 17 years leading the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, she co-founded Taproot Earth to create connections and power across issues, movements, and geographies. Resources Colette Pichon Battle – Expanding Our Movements for Climate Justice | Bioneers 2024 Keynote Taproot Earth Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Songs in this Episode: 'Good Morning New Orleans' by Kermit Ruffins; 'What Goes Around Comes Around' by Rebirth Brass Band, provided by Basin Street Records in New Orleans, Louisiana This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

In this second of a two-part program, we plunge into the mind-bending proposition that we get a second chance to remake our broken food economy. Bren Smith, co-founder and co-Executive Director of GreenWave, has created a revolutionary polycultural farming model that has low upfront costs, is easily scalable, and can help mitigate climate change. It’s called regenerative ocean farming and aims to redesign the food economy away from destructive profit-driven practices and agribusiness monopolies in favor of democratizing the food economy.

From local communities and states to federal policy, antitrust movements to dismantle monopolies are challenging the system that can be summed up as: Make Feudalism Great Again. Although breaking up is hard to do, we’ve broken up monopolies before. In this second of our two-part program, we join Thom Hartmann, Stacy Mitchell and Maurice B.P. Weeks to survey the landscape of rising antitrust movements to break the stranglehold of corporate power and level the playing field for a democratized economy.

By around 2044, the U.S. will become a majority-minority nation. This seismic demographic shift has triggered a cultural earthquake, provoking a radical spike in hate crimes. In times of massive disruption and economic stress, what Carl Jung called the “shadow side of the psyche” comes into play: the pronounced psychological tendency in the collective psyche is to project these shadow qualities with unusual potency onto whomever people see as “the other.” But is there also a deeper story? Perhaps the question to ask is: Who benefits? In this half hour, we hear from Heather McGhee of Demos. She sees a direct connection between today’s extreme inequality and this peak moment of racial panic and white anxiety. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Erosion and evolution. Shadow and light. Death and rebirth. These are some of the strands that the acclaimed author, naturalist and activist Terry Tempest Williams weaves together in the face of today’s broken world. Standing in the lineage of the greatest nature writers, she links her deepest inner experiences with the state of the web of life. In this program, Williams asks: How do we find the strength to not look away at all that is breaking our hearts? Hands on the earth, we remember where the source of our authentic power comes from. We have to go deeper. She also explores histories of privilege, religion, and identity in Utah, and how reconciling her experiences with these cultural strands have helped unleash and shape her voice as a storyteller who translates the voice of nature and speaks for justice. 

How does a virtue become a vice? How does a basic building block of life turn into a threat to life? And how do you turn that vice back into a virtue? In this half-hour we visit with two unlikely pathfinders who are helping to revolutionize farming. Calla Rose Ostrander and John Wick of the Marin Carbon Project are taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it back where it belongs: in the soil. In so doing, they’re also revitalizing the soil, conserving water, and building agricultural resilience. Scaling up these revolutionary regenerative methods can offset the climate destabilization, which that threatens to confound agriculture and endanger our food supply. Check out Bioneers' Deep Dive on Carbon Farming where you can read articles, watch videos and catch up on current related news. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Native American students face racism throughout their education, from racist mascots to the historical erasure of the American genocide from textbooks. In this passionate conversation, Indigenous Rights Activists Dahkota Brown, Chiitaanibah Johnson, Jayden Lim, and Naelyn Pike share stories of their own experiences and how they are working to abolish racism in schools.

In times of strife, how can art serve as a healthy catalyst for positive transformation? Join San Francisco City Art Commissioner Dorka Keehn in a conversation about the frontlines of cultural revolution. With: Favianna Rodriguez, a renowned transnational interdisciplinary artist and cultural organizer focused on social change. Recorded at the 2015 National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.

How can investment choices and strategies truly move the needle on large-scale change? Four leading entrepreneur/investors working to reinvent and re-imagine impact investing share strategies and projects. Hosted by Darian Rodriguez Heyman, former Craigslist Foundation Executive Director and SF Environment Commissioner. With: Silda Wall Spitzer, New World Capital, which invests primarily in green technologies; James Joaquin, co-founder of the venture capital firm Obvious Ventures; Catlin Powers of Sol Source, inventor, Research Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. Recorded Saturday, October 17, 2015 at the National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.

There is indeed a clash of civilizations today, between a sustainable civilization and a disposable one. Author and social entrepreneur Paul Hawken identifies a new superpower: the mighty river of global popular movements with real solutions. He tracks the unprecedented phenomenon of this biggest movement in the history of the world, the diverse face of a rising new culture of restoration, of reconciliation, of healing.

They say love means never having to say you’re sorry. But what if that popular aphorism from the 1960’s is wrong and that love precisely means having to say you’re sorry? Can an apology release the trauma, grief, rage and disfigurement arising from past abuse? But what if the perpetrator does not apologize? Can you still resolve or reconcile the trauma and hurt? How? These are some of the agonizing questions that the artist, playwright, performer and activist Eve Ensler, now known as V chose to face to resolve her own relationship with her abusive late father. She did it by writing a book, The Apology. In writing it, she tried to imagine being her father. Who was he? What allowed him to do such terrible harms? Could she free herself from this prison of the past? Could she free both of them?

As the creation story of Judeo-Christian beliefs, the biblical recounting of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden has long had profound influence around the world. So what’s it like to be named Eve? World-renowned playwright and activist Eve Ensler explores her own personal journey into her namesake. The provocative author of “The Vagina Monologues” and founder of V-Day to end violence against women suggests there’s another story beneath the traditional story. For her, it’s both very personal – and very political.

Globally, women experience some of the harshest challenges in wartime and the climate crisis while simultaneously remaining caretakers to their families, communities, and the Earth. Zainab Salbi is a humanitarian, author and media host who has dedicated her life to empowering women on the frontlines in conflict zones and climate crisis zones. Her vision is that the fate of humanity depends on elevating feminine leadership that offers a model for a new way of being – for both women and men. Globally, women experience some of the harshest challenges in wartime and the climate crisis while simultaneously remaining caretakers to their families, communities, and the Earth. Zainab Salbi is a humanitarian, author and media host who has dedicated her life to empowering women on the frontlines in conflict zones and climate crisis zones. Her vision is that the fate of humanity depends on elevating feminine leadership that offers a model for a new way of being – for both women and men. Featuring: Zainab Salbi is a celebrated humanitarian, author, and journalist, co-founder of DaughtersforEarth.org, “Chief Awareness Officer” at FindCenter.com, host of the Redefined podcast, and founder of Women for Women International. The author of several books, including the bestseller, Between Two Worlds and, most recently, Freedom Is an Inside Job, she is also the creator and host of several TV shows, including #MeToo, Now What? on PBS. Resources Zainab Salbi – Daughters for Earth (video) | Bioneers 2022 Keynote Daughters for Earth: Women and the Climate Change Movement (video) | Bioneers 2022 Panel This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast For more info on Zainab Salbi and show notes, please visit our radio page.

How do you go from being a passionate tree-hugger to a business-suited change-maker on behalf of the forests? Enter ForestEthics Program Director Tzeporah Berman. With a string of conservation successes, including the "Amazon of the North," her inspiring story shows how innovative market-based strategies, strange bedfellows, and public embarrassment are powerful tools to preserve the wild places that provide our essential ecosystem services.

At the Bioneers Conference in 2017, we spoke with Heather McGhee, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the organization Demos. McGhee describes how the election of Barack Obama resulted in both a racial backlash and the illusion that we were suddenly living in a post-racial society. She also shares a hopeful story that demonstrates a pathway towards healing the divisions that harm us all.

Imagine this: A popular character on a Spanish-language soap opera resonates so deeply with viewers that they become empowered and educated about literacy. Avatars in the virtual world called Second Life enable people of all faiths to better understand and respect Islamic culture. Digital and media entrepreneur William Ryerson effectively uses innovative media for social change. Digital citizen diplomats Joshua S. Fouts and Rita J. King design virtual games that help foster vibrant community and culture in the physical world. They're all demonstrating the game-changing power of technology to change the world for the better.

Today, three to five giant corporations control up to 80% of almost every industry and marketplace. These monopolies depress wages, exploit workers, and decimate small businesses. Stacy Mitchell from the Institute for Local Self Reliance has been a leader in a growing anti-monopoly movement with a broad political base. Can this emerging movement – along with bold federal antitrust action –  create a force that can challenge corporate power for the first time in decades?  Featuring Stacy Mitchell, a Maine-based writer, strategist, and policy advocate whose work focuses on dismantling concentrated corporate power and building thriving communities and a healthy democracy, has played a leading role in today’s growing anti-monopoly movement. She is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) and the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, and co-author of the influential report: Amazon’s Stranglehold. Resources Stacy Mitchell – Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power | Bioneers 2024 Keynote Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reade Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

World-renowned primatologist Professor Frans de Waal explores the nature of sex and gender among our cousins the apes, and how gender diversity is a common and pervasive potential on nature’s masculine-feminine continuum. In the quest to overcome human gender inequality, he suggests that our focus needs to be on the inequality. For full transcript and show notes, visit: Resources Bioneers article, Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist with Frans de Waal This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Climate is the trip wire for every other foundational ecological and biological system – as well as the basis for human civilization. As we face the long climate emergency, fortunately, skillful pathfinders are banding together to transform our ways of living and bring resilience from the ground up into widespread practice. With Berkeley’s Chief Resilience Officer, Timothy Burroughs, Professor David W. Orr, and financial adviser Tom Van Dyck.

In this episode on community wealth building, we look at how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing the assets that exist in their place. It’s the Kryptonite to the corporate model that extracts wealth from communities. Instead, they’re anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people - from land to money and finance. We hear from Nicole Ndumele from the Center for American Progress; Mike Strode, from The Kola Nut Collaborative; and Deyanira del Río of the New Economy Project. Resources Center for American Progress New Economy Project Open Collective Foundation The Kola Nut Collaborative Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reader This episode is part 1 of a 4-part series exploring how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing their assets, anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people – from land to money and finance. Explore the full series here. Guest Host Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of Laura Flanders & Friends, which airs on PBS stations nationwide. She is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Media Center. Credits This series is co-produced by Bioneers and Laura Flanders & Friends Laura Flanders & Friends Producers: Laura Flanders and Abigail Handel Production Assistance: Jeannie Hopper and David Neumann Bioneers Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Leseliey Welch and Indra Lusero, parents and birth justice advocates, are helping to lead a movement to create community birth centers across the nation. To help address the maternal and infant mortality crisis, they’re realizing a vision where midwives are the leaders in care in a reclamation of the normal physiologic process of birth. They say birth centers provide racially and culturally reverent care founded in safety, love and trust. Featuring Leseliey Welch, MPH, MBA, is Co-founder of Birth Detroit (Detroit's first freestanding birth center) and Birth Center Equity, a mom and a tireless advocate for work that makes communities stronger, healthier and more free. Indra Lusero is a Colorado licensed attorney, founder of Elephant Circle and the Birth Rights Bar Association, designed Colorado’s ambitious Birth Equity bill package. Resources Reclaiming Birth: The Movement for Safe, Reverent, and Equitable Maternity Care in America This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Communities around the country are working to create a new food future founded in health, justice and ecological wellbeing. Community activists Malik Kenyatta Yakini and Oran Hesterman are transforming Detroit through urban agriculture and helping low-income and working families access healthy food. Cathryn Couch works with young people to cook and deliver healthy meals to people who are ill and struggling to put food on the table with a model program using food as medicine.

Small farmers around the world are building an agro-ecological revolution based on self-sufficiency, food security, and freedom from fossil fuels and corporate control. In this program, we hear from two visionary agroecology innovators. Miguel Altieri is an agroecologist and entomologist at U.C. Berkeley who’s showing how farmers who embrace agroecology are building a movement based on self-sufficiency, food security and freedom from fossil fuels and corporate control. Alex Eaton is the founder of “Sistema Bio”. This game-changing company helps farmers implement a simple technology that converts waste to energy, builds healthy soils, and holds the promise of massively reducing greenhouse gases and lifting people out of poverty.

Native American students face racism throughout their education, from racist mascots to the historical erasure of the American genocide from textbooks. In this passionate conversation, Indigenous Rights Activists Dahkota Brown, Chiitaanibah Johnson, Jayden Lim, and Naelyn Pike share stories of their own experiences and how they are working to abolish racism in schools.

As author Michael Pollan observes: “The two biggest crises humanity faces today are tribalism and the environmental crisis. They both involve the objectifying of the other – whether that other is nature or other people.” How do we re-weave that web of relationships, and focus on our likenesses rather than our differences? In this program, racial justice advocates john a. powell, Eriel Deranger and Anita Sanchez explore how overcoming the illusion of separateness from nature and each other requires building bridges rather than burning them. They say the fate of the world depends on it. Featuring john a. powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Eriel Deranger (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation), Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action. Anita Sanchez, bestselling author, consultant, trainer and executive coach specializing in indigenous wisdom, diversity and inclusion, leadership, culture and promoting positive change in our world. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

The genius of nature’s design, recipes and principles is serving as the inspiration for redesigning human civilization. This Biomimicry revolution is spawning a next industrial revolution. Biomimicry masters Janine Benyus and Jay Harman illuminate the forefront of nature-inspired design, including human organization and the power of networks. Featuring: Janine Benyus is a biologist, author, innovation consultant, and self proclaimed “nature nerd.” She may not have coined the term biomimicry, but she certainly popularized it in her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Jay Harman is a pioneering scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur dedicated to creating breakthrough technologies through biomimicry. In Biomimicry, she names an emerging discipline that emulates nature’s designs and processes (e.g., solar cells that mimic leaves) to create a healthier, more sustainable planet. Since the book’s release, Janine has evolved the practice of biomimicry, speaking around the world about what we can learn from the genius that surrounds us. Resources: biomimicry.org/ Explore the Bioneers media collection: bioneers.org/biomimicry/ This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

As a backlash against LGBTQ rights escalates into an authoritarian crusade, acclaimed author and queer activist Taylor Brorby asks how we can still be fighting this battle? As a writer addressing the fossil fuel industry’s acceleration in the midst of climate chaos, Taylor is forced to choose between the existential crises of the assaults on nature and on LGBTQ people. It’s all connected, he says, as he seeks to reconcile nature, culture, diversity and belonging. Visit the episode page for more show notes and transcript. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Hey podcast listeners! We’re launching a new series called Indigeneity Conversations. Produced by Bioneers and hosted by Indigeneity Program Directors Cara Romero and Alexis Bunten. This series is dedicated to amplifying and uplifting Indigenous voices, experiences and solutions. New episodes will be released on this podcast feed, so stay tuned. This series premiere episode features a conversation with Crystal Echo Hawk, an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and President and CEO of IllumiNative and of Echo Hawk Consulting.  From racist mascots, to stereotypes in national creation myths like Thanksgiving, we have always faced misrepresentation and disrespect of our cultures and identities. Cultural appropriation and commodification of our cultures is commonplace, but Native activists, artists, youth, educators, legislators and our allies are changing that reality. We are winning battles to ban racist mascots and call out negative stereotypes in the media.

Environmental literacy and social justice are inextricably linked, and recent changes in California’s curricula fully encourage pedagogical exploration of this linkage. Three new academic content frameworks (in Science, History-Social Science, and Health) promote challenge-based learning, in which student inquiry leads to student action in local communities. Students are also discovering nature-inspired design, i.e. Biomimicry, as part of this process. In this session, a school district representative, a teacher, and a student, share their perspectives about this intersection of environmental literacy and social justice. The panel also leads hands-on immersion into the Biomimicry design process with a focus on ways to apply these methods in our own schools and communities. With: Beth Rattner, Biomimicry Institute; Juanita Chan, Rialto Unified School District; Kavita Gupta, Freemont Union High School District. Moderated by Emily Schell, Executive Director, California Global Education Project; Caleb Jordan-McDaniels, Redwood High School.  

We plug into the real world Matrix – the digital Wild West of surveillance capitalism that dominates this Age of Information. Behind it is the unholy alliance between Big Tech and Big Brother. Privacy is the first casualty and democracy dies with it. Our guide is Cindy Cohn, director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, with her decades of experience challenging digital authoritarianism. Featuring Cindy Cohn, the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015, served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel from 2000 to 2015. Among other honors, Ms. Cohn was named to The Non-Profit Times 2020 Power & Influence TOP 50 list, and in 2018, Forbes included Ms. Cohn as one of America’s Top 50 Women in Tech. Resources Cindy Cohn – The Climate Fight is Digital | Bioneers 2024 Keynote Tools from Electronic Frontier Foundation Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Additional production and writing: Leo Hornak Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Contemporary Western fire science is integrating what Indigenous Peoples discovered over thousands of years of observation, and trial and error: fire is key to optimizing forest vitality and biodiversity. The merging of these two ways of knowing could signal the end to our misguided policy of fire suppression, and the beginning of fire-resilient communities with a new relationship to one of nature’s most elemental and fearful forces. With fire ecologists Chad Hanson and Frank Kanawha Lake.

John Todd, an ecological designer in the field of biomimicry, imitates nature's evolutionary genius to serve human ends harmlessly, using nature's processes as the design for buildings, technologies and practical solutions to environmental devastation. Educator David Orr suggests that true ecological design can take place only in a society willing to ask, "How would nature do it?"

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” (Bertolt Brecht). John Densmore, legendary drummer of the Doors, joins visionary spoken word duo Climbing PoeTree in an exploration of creativity and social change. This episode of the Bioneers features exclusive interviews with the artists and a special Bioneers performance of Jim Morrison’s poem, “American Prayer”.

Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination. Places of mystery and magic – of wildness and wisdom – of vision and dreaming. Yet beyond mythic realms of imagination, we’ve largely treated forests as inert physical resources to satisfy human needs and desires. The main operative science behind this commodification has been market science – how to extract maximum resources and profits. Suzanne Simard is a revolutionary researcher who is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial. The story Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other – for the long haul. Featuring Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, is an expert in the synergies and complexities of forests and the development of sustainable forest stewardship practices. Her groundbreaking research centers on the relationships between plants, microbes, soils, carbon, nutrients and water that underlie the adaptability of ecosystems, especially the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate interplant communication. Learn more about Suzanne Simard and her work at her website. Explore More Dispatches From the Mother Trees, Suzanne Simard’s keynote address to the 2021 Bioneers Conference, in which she discusses the dire global consequences of logging old-growth rainforests, and nature-based solutions that combine Western science and Indigenous knowledge for preserving and caring for these invaluable forest ecosystems for future generations. Lessons from the Underground, a panel discussion from the 2021 Bioneers Conference featuring Suzanne Simard as well as Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery, a wife and husband team of scientific researchers whose groundbreaking work on the microbial life of soil has revealed its crucial importance to human wellbeing and survival. Moderated by Bioneers’ Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan.  Intelligence in Nature, a deep-dive resource featuring leading experts in this burgeoning field. What We Owe Our Trees, an article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination. Places of mystery and magic - of wildness and wisdom - of vision and dreaming. Yet beyond mythic realms of imagination, we’ve largely treated forests as inert physical resources to satisfy human needs and desires. The main operative science behind this commodification has been market science – how to extract maximum resources and profits. Suzanne Simard is a revolutionary researcher who is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial. The story Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other – for the long haul.

An hour long special on how transformational women leaders are restoring societal balance by showing us how to reconnect relationships not only among people, but between people and the natural world. This astounding conversation among diverse women leaders provides a fascinating window into the soulful depths of what it means to restore the balance between our masculine and feminine selves to bring about wholeness, justice and true restoration of people and planet. Alice Walker, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Nina Simons, Sarah Crowell, Joanna Macy and Akaya Winwood

What would it feel like to live in a world where our built environment was as elegant as nature's designs? What if our living and working spaces nurtured our human communities and quality of life? Architect and designer Jason F. McLennan takes the revolution from the heart of nature and the human heart into our built environment. He is shifting the fateful civilizational inflection point we face - from degradation to regeneration - from fear to love.  Featuring Jason F. McLennan, one of the world’s most influential visionaries in contemporary architecture and green building, is a highly sought-out designer, consultant and thought leader. A winner of Engineering News Record’s National Award of Excellence and of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize (which was, during its 10-year trajectory, known as “the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design”), Jason has been showered with such accolades as “the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ of the green building industry and a “World Changer” (by GreenBiz magazine). Resources Jason McLennan Keynote Bioneers 2022 – From Reconciliation to Regeneration Deep Community Resilience: Preparing for the Coming Age, Place-By-Place | Jason F. McLennan Child-Centered Planning: A New Specialized Pattern Language Tool | Jason F. McLennan Visit the episode page for transcript and more information. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. From the historic Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969 to the fossil fuel fights throughout Canada and the U.S. today, Indigenous resistance illuminates an activism founded in a spiritual connection with the web of life and the human community - with Julian NoiseCat, Dr. LaNada War Jack and Clayton Thomas Müller. Featuring Julian Brave NoiseCat is a polymath whose work spans journalism, public policy, research, art, activism and advocacy. He serves as Director of Green Strategy at Data for Progress, as well as “Narrative Change Director” for the Natural History Museum artist and activist collective. Dr. LaNada War Jack is an enrolled member of the Shoshone Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho. Clayton Thomas-Müller is a member of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, also known as Pukatawagan, in Northern Manitoba. He serves as the “Stop it at the Source” campaigner with 350.org. Resources Faulty Infrastructure and the Impacts of the Dakota Access Pipeline | 2022 NDN Collective Climate Justice Report From Alcatraz to Standing Rock and Beyond: On the Past 50 and Next 50 Years of Indigenous Activism | 2019 Bioneers Indigenous Forum Julian Brave NoiseCat – Apocalypse Then & Now | 2021 Bioneers Keynote Address Bioneers Indigeneity Curriculum | Free resources for educators covering Alcatraz, Standing Rock, and more Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Producer: Teo Grossman Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Production Assistance: Monica Lopez Special thanks to Cara Romero and Alexis Bunten, co-producers of the Bioneers Indigeneity Forum. This program features music by Justin Delorme, Chippewa Travelers and Mimi O’Bonsawin from Nagamo Publishing at Nagamo.ca. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Leading women designers gathered by the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) explore the principles of participatory design—inclusion, cooperation, community, regeneration—and how we can design a human world that meets everyone’s needs without harming the bio- sphere. Hosted by Elizabeth Thompson, BFI Executive Director. With: Erin Meezan, VP of Sustainability, Interface, Inc.; Jane Harrison, co-founder, PITCHAfrica/Waterbank Schools; Dawn Danby, Senior Sustainable Design Program Manager, Autodesk, Inc.

As author Michael Pollan observes: “The two biggest crises humanity faces today are tribalism and the environmental crisis. They both involve the objectifying of the other – whether that other is nature or other people.” How do we re-weave that web of relationships, and focus on our likenesses rather than our differences? In this program, racial justice advocates john a. powell, Eriel Deranger and Anita Sanchez explore how overcoming the illusion of separateness from nature and each other requires building bridges rather than burning them. They say the fate of the world depends on it. Featuring john a. powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Eriel Deranger (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation), Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action. Anita Sanchez, bestselling author, consultant, trainer and executive coach specializing in indigenous wisdom, diversity and inclusion, leadership, culture and promoting positive change in our world. Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Producer: Teo Grossman Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Hosted by marine biologist Wallace “J.” Nichols, research associate, California Academy of Sciences; co-founder, OceanRevolution.org; author of Blue Mind. New ways of understanding our relationship with the world’s oceans and the ability of healthy waters to provide health, happiness and creativity will be considered by a panel of athletes, scientists, artists, and adventurers. With: Kevin Weiner, post-doctoral fellow, Stanford University and Director of Public Communication, Institute for Applied Neuroscience; Nik Sawe, doctoral candidate, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Stanford University; and Andi Wong, Teaching Artist, Rooftop Alternative K-8 School. Recorded Sunday, October 19, 2014 at the National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.

In neighborhoods across the country, citizens are building community resilience – one shovelful and one backyard at a time. Visionary citizen restorationists Trathen Heckman of Daily Acts and Jessie Lerner of Sustain Dane show how seemingly small acts like catching rain and growing food forests are turning green visions into action, with the help of local governments, school kids, businesses, artists and churches. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Black farmers have been leaving the land at three and a half times the rate of other farmers. It turns out that this loss of black farmers is due less to farming policies and practices than it is to generations of institutional racism. Civil Rights attorney J.L. Chestnut, in a brilliant and emotional speech, tells the story of the successful historic litigation against the USDA on behalf of these farmers.

"Three-quarters of our military expenditure is for forces whose primary mission is intervention in the Persian Gulf. If we got off the oil, we wouldn't need most of the forces we have, it would be a very different world, and I think a much safer as well as a fairer and richer one." The concept of national security is moving beyond bullets, bombs, soldiers and warcraft to encompass the country’s internal resilience, health and environmental sustainability. What’s needed, say two leading environmental visionaries, is the equivalent of a wartime mobilization to create a sustainable planet including a far more decentralized infrastructure. Global energy strategist Amory Lovins and Oberlin College Professor David Orr advocate sustainability as the strategic imperative and foundation for a new national security narrative. The military is starting to agree.

How can we manifest the world we want, and who we want to be? Actor-activist Danny Glover and Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, former CEO of Green For All, show how one sure path to resilience is to build community and social movements. That requires learning how to reach out across our differences – and it gets really personal. Featuring Danny Glover is an award-winning actor, producer, humanitarian and political activist with a performance career that spans more than 30 years.  Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is a social justice advocate and businesswoman. Ellis-Lamkins is the co-founder and CEO of Promise, modern payment technology platform that provides alternative payment solutions for cities, counties, states and utility companies across the country and simplifies how people manage government payments, such as utilities, child support and parking tickets by offering customizable plans and providing digital payment options. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.    

In this moment of radical transformation, shifting the societal pronoun from “me, me, me” to “we” may be the single most transformational pivot we can make in order for anything else to work. Our destiny is ultimately collective. How can we overcome corrosive divisions and separations that are tearing us apart and create a world where everyone belongs? In this program, we dip into a deep conversation on this topic between Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell, two long-time friends and leaders in a quest toward building a multicultural democracy.  Featuring Angela Glover Blackwell is Founder-in-Residence at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity. One of the nation’s most prominent, award-winning social justice advocates, she serves on numerous boards and advisory councils, including the inaugural Community Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and California’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. john a. powell is the Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. A former National Legal Director of the ACLU, he co-founded the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. His latest book is: Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.  Resources From Othering to Belonging | Bioneers 2022 Panel Discussion with Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell Angela Glover Blackwell - Transformative Solidarity for a Thriving Multiracial Democracy | Bioneers 2022 Keynote Address john a. powell - Healing Across Divides: Building Bridges to Challenge Systemic Injustice | Bioneers 2020 Keynote Address Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Producer: Teo Grossman Production Assistance: Anna Rubanova and Monica Lopez This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast. 

In October 2016, before Trump was elected, Eve Ensler gave a visionary call at the Bioneers conference for men to put ending rape culture front and center in their lives and work. Candidate Trump, said Eve, is a phenomenon – something larger than the person - because he’s channeling the unprocessed darkness in the environment and swirling it into ever-greater darkness. He’s carrying our collective karma, and we can change that. Since then, serial scandals have continued to escalate until the dam burst with the Weinstein wake-up-call and the cultural tsunami of the #metoo movement. It’s a watershed moment, but little will actually change, says Eve, unless and until men step up to dismantle the patriarchy, transforming themselves in the process of ending this vicious system that destroys men’s souls as well. The gender wound may be the deepest social wound of all. At this epic moment of seismic cultural change, what we do now will determine the future for decades to come. This is the moment to begin healing the gender wound once and for all. Please let us know what Eve’s words mean to you. - Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder

In the burgeoning field of biomimicry, bioneers are designing a technological civilization that harmonizes with nature’s operating instructions. Inventor Jay Harman models the forms and dynamics of water with astounding results. Chemist Paul Anastas is re-inventing a “Green Chemistry” that transforms how we make things. Imitating nature is paying off for the economy, people and the planet.

Native American students face racism throughout their education, from racist mascots to the historical erasure of the American genocide from textbooks. In this passionate conversation, Indigenous Rights Activists Dahkota Brown, Chiitaanibah Johnson, Jayden Lim, and Naelyn Pike share stories of their own experiences and how they are working to abolish racism in schools.

What will it take to begin to heal the deep wounds between women and men? What is the role of men in this transformation? Cynthia Brix and Will Keepin from Gender Reconciliation International say that only by bringing these wounds into the light can we heal them. Patriarchy destroys men’s souls, too, so a revolution in gender relations can liberate women and men. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

To transform our culture from its focus on dominance and hierarchy to one of connection, empathy and collaboration, it’s vital that we re-envision the essential (or archetypal) masculine, which changes everything. This rarely tackled topic is the subject of a deeply authentic dialogue among Playwright and activist V formerly, Eve Ensler, and three men working to change men and change the story: Tony Porter, co-founder, A Call To Men; Dallas Goldtooth, Indigenous activist, actor and member of the 1491’s Native American comedy troupe; George Lipsitz, board president, African American Policy Forum. To see a clip from the recorded panel at the Bioneers Conference, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0nhQWA_5HU This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Award-winning painter Judy Baca describes how art can reconnect people to place, revive disappearing history, and repair cultural root systems. While working with at-risk youth to create The Great Wall of Los Angeles, the world's longest mural, Baca realized that restoring a disappeared river also meant restoring disappeared cultures.

Just how dumb do they think we are? Who would believe that destroying the ecosystems on which all life depends, while dis-employing more and more people, is somehow good for the economy? But exactly that fiction of jobs versus the environment has been successfully marketed to us. Community organizers Van Jones and Majora Carter propose a radically simple solution for both environmental destruction and social inequality: Bring the rising green revolution to low-income, urban America.

The worlds of psychedelic research and culture have historically been heavily male, and the stories of some of the great women pioneers in these domains have not received the attention they deserve. This historic panel discussion brought together some of the most extraordinary women who have contributed to this field in their own very diverse ways. The intrepid ethnobotanist, artist and co-founder of Botanical Dimensions, Kat Harrison was joined by the legendary Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, a key figure in the Merry Pranksters and former wife of the late Grateful Dead guitarist; Annie Oak, founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress; and family nurse midwife with decades of experience, Mariavittoria Mangini, Ph.D.

In these ecologically dangerous times, many call for a fundamental change of heart if we are to restore vital ecosystems. Oren Lyons, Leslie Gray and John Mohawk remind us of the values that sustained people for thousands of years in a balance that supported the land. They offer direction toward nothing less than a value change for survival.

In this time of radical upheaval and change, fulfilling the promise of a “more perfect union” in the United States means building a multi-racial democracy through transformative solidarity. As the Founder-in-Residence at Policy Link, Professor Angela Glover Blackwell has spent decades advancing racial and economic equity at the national and local levels. She says the fate of the wealthiest nation on Earth depends on what happens to the very people who’ve been left behind. Featuring Angela Glover Blackwell, one of the nation’s most prominent, award-winning social justice advocates, is “Founder-in-Residence” at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity that has long been a leading force in improving access and opportunity in such areas as health, housing, transportation, and infrastructure. The host of the “Radical Imagination” podcast and a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Angela, before PolicyLink, served as Senior Vice President at The Rockefeller Foundation and founded the Urban Strategies Council. She serves on numerous boards and advisory councils, including the inaugural Community Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and California’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. Resources From Othering to Belonging with Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell Transformative Solidarity for a Thriving Multiracial Democracy with Angela Glover Blackwell This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Women-led movements arising around the world herald a profound shift that changes everything. Visionary women leaders Osprey Orielle-Lake, Leila Salazar and Lynne Twist report on the women leading the clean energy revolution in Africa, defending the Amazonian rainforest, and making peace in Liberia.

In this podcast excerpt from a Bioneers workshop, Rebecca Burgess, Ariel Greenwood, and Guido Frosini explain how drawing carbon from the atmosphere and capturing it in the soil can reverse climate change. “Our soils have a carbon debt. Our atmosphere is gushing with carbon. The carbon over our heads is literally in the wrong place.” Rebecca Burgess Rather than being the problem, carbon can be the solution to climate change by managing our landscapes to capture atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis and sequester it in the soil where it increases fertility and makes the land more drought resilient. Marin and Sonoma County ranchers and entrepreneurs are building local agricultural economies while regenerating ecosystems and sequestering carbon. The Fibershed Project, founded by Rebecca Burgess, is developing regional clothing production with a community of ecological farmers and artisans. Solar power, grey-water and recycling are all embedded aspects of the Fibershed’s. They have also implemented a Climate Beneficial Certification for their suppliers to ensure that from soil to garment production the stewardship of the environment and climate are paramount considerations. Two young climate conscious ranchers who share the Fibershed’s ethos are Ariel Greenwood and Guido Frosini. Both balance deep ecology with landscape and livestock management and economic sustainability. Ariel, who describes herself as a “feral agrarian,” holistically manages a herd of cattle to regenerate ecosystems and restore water cycles by increasing biodiversity and sequestering carbon. Guido Frosini of True Grass Farms is an innovative land steward who balances soil and grass cycles with the intentional movement of livestock in a climate beneficial ranching system. Rebecca, Ariel and Guido share their experience, knowledge, and aspirations on this Food Web podcast: Carbon, Climate, Food and Fiber

Amy Emerson, Director of Clinical Research at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS); Martin Lee, Director of Project CBD; and Ralph Metzner, legendary psychedelic research pioneer, share their insights into the state of knowledge about the potential curative properties of psychedelic substances.

Ever since women won the right to vote in 1920, women leaders and their allies have sought to pass an Equal Rights Amendment to drive total equality and justice for women into the U.S. Constitution. It did pass in 1972, but fell three states short of ratification. Today’s next wave of the women’s movement might finally make the ERA a reality. Why is Constitutional protection so crucial? Join leading advocates Joan Blades (MomsRising co-founder), attorney Kimberle Crenshaw and Jessica Neuwirth (ERA Coalition President) to learn the true story of what’s at stake and how life would be different and better for women and men. To learn more about Kimberle Crenshaw’s work, visit the African American Policy Forum.  You can follow Joan Blades work at MomsRising, and Living Room Conversations. Follow the progress Jessica Neuwirth and others are making with the ERA Coalition. See related media in our Green New Deal Media Collection. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Sequestering soil carbon is a critically important way to mitigate climate change. Hosted by John Roulac, founder and CEO of the groundbreaking organic superfood company, Nutiva. With: rancher John Wick, co-founder of the exemplary Marin Carbon Project, developing ways to increase durable carbon on his grazed grassland while increasing biodiversity and soil fertility and capturing the scientific data. Recorded Saturday, October 17, 2015 at the National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.

Climate is the trip wire for every other foundational ecological and biological system – as well as the basis for human civilization. As we face the long climate emergency, fortunately, skillful pathfinders are banding together to transform our ways of living and bring resilience from the ground up into widespread practice. With Berkeley’s Chief Resilience Officer, Timothy Burroughs, Professor David W. Orr, and financial adviser Tom Van Dyck.