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.
Jan 10, 2024•29 min•Season 16Ep. 6
Our physical health is intimately tied to environmental health, as well as to our emotional and spiritual ecology. Visionary physician Dr. Gabor Maté explores the deepest psychological, emotional and social forces leading to our society’s poor health and unhappiness. He says we have the capacity to heal both ourselves and the planet by reconnecting with our true nature as empathic, nurturing, social beings. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the...
Dec 20, 2023•29 min
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...
Dec 05, 2023•29 min•Ep. 255
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 ...
Nov 29, 2023•29 min
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 Birt...
Nov 15, 2023•29 min•Ep. 265
Climate disruption is harmful to your health. Dr. Linda Rudolph and Dr. Barbara Sattler are showing how our success or failure as a civilization may well hinge on how ingenious, nimble and socially just our public health systems can become in restoring the ecosystem health on which all health depends. And doing the right thing is good for our health. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.
Nov 07, 2023•29 min
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...
Oct 31, 2023•29 min
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 seve...
Oct 19, 2023•29 min
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.
Oct 10, 2023•28 min
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 t...
Oct 03, 2023•29 min
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 kinshi...
Sep 25, 2023•29 min
“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”.
Sep 19, 2023•29 min
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. Featuring Frans B. M. de Waal, Ph.D., is a Dutch/American biologist and primatologist widely renowned for his work on the behavior and social intelligence of primates. C....
Sep 13, 2023•29 min
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...
Sep 05, 2023•28 min
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 ...
Aug 29, 2023•28 min
Ecuadorians have voted to ban oil drilling in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, the Yasuní National Park, situated in the Amazon rainforest. This historic vote will hopefully set an important precedent for the future of climate policy. To celebrate this historic win, we're revisiting some voices from those on the front lines of protecting the Amazon. If the rate of destruction doesn’t change, by the year 2020 most of the Amazon ecosystem – the lungs of the planet – will be destroy...
Aug 22, 2023•29 min
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.
Aug 15, 2023•29 min
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 res...
Aug 08, 2023•28 min
"Why plant a garden when you can put plants to work for you in your own body?" This is one of the mind bending questions Lynn Margulis, one of the greatest cross-disciplinary scientific thinkers and educators of our epoch, asks. Margulis, ethnobotanist Wade Davis and mycologist Paul Stamets weave tales of amazing plant intelligence like the "Hat Thrower Mushroom" and animals that eat light.
Aug 01, 2023•28 min
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 ...
Aug 01, 2023•29 min
Today, there’s a renaissance of independent journalism dedicated to holding power accountable. Political pressures are mounting to break up media monopolies and provide access to more voices. Independent and investigative media outlets are proliferating, often as nonprofits funded from the bottom up. In this program, we hear from two veteran journalists who lead two of the most courageous and successful independent media outlets in the United States: Monika Bauerlein, the CEO of Mother Jones mag...
Jul 27, 2023•29 min
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 Ann 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 poss...
Jul 18, 2023•29 min
In a world that’s unraveling from climate disruption and gaping inequality, another climate crisis confronts us: the climate of hate and othering. Award-winning scholar and educator Valarie Kaur says to overcome racism and nationalism, we must not succumb to rage and grief. As someone who has spent much of her life challenging horrific injustices and intolerance, Kaur learned the lesson that historical nonviolent change-makers understood: social movements must be grounded in an ethic of love. Sh...
Jul 13, 2023•29 min
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? Perhap...
Jul 04, 2023•29 min
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 Bio...
Jun 28, 2023•29 min
Labor organizer and Founder of One Fair Wage, Saru Jayaraman, takes us inside one of the fiercest labor struggles to challenge a mighty oligarchy: The food, beverage and restaurant industry. Workers are walking off the job and refusing historically low wages. She says if “we the people” stand with workers as they face this powerful lobby, they can win. Featuring Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, co-founded (after 9/11) the R...
Jun 21, 2023•29 min
What we do to each other, we do to the Earth. To protect our common home, we’re being called upon to bridge our differences to create beloved community and peaceful coexistence. A new generation of visionary change-makers is reframing the race conversation, and designing new tools to transform our unconscious biases and create justice. With: Racial justice pathfinders Rinku Sen, Saru Jayaraman and Malkia Cyril. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit...
Jun 13, 2023•29 min•Ep. 316
After World War II, the U.S. government worked with industry to create a single-use, disposable consumer culture as a way to ensure ongoing market prosperity. Who benefited? Consumer product companies like Coca-Cola, and the fossil fuel industry, whose petrochemicals are at the source. The result? Plastic pollution is now found in virtually every living organism – including humans – and is one of the worst threats to ocean ecosystems. Now, a global resistance movement is rising to abolish petroc...
Jun 06, 2023•28 min•Ep. 718
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. Th...
May 23, 2023•29 min
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 g...
May 16, 2023•29 min
