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...
Jan 15, 2025•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jan 08, 2025•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 m...
Jan 01, 2025•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Dec 25, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Dec 18, 2024•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this age of global weirding where climate disruption has tumbled the Goldilocks effect into unruly surges of too much and too little water, the restoration of beavers offers ancient nature-based solutions to the tangle of challenges bedeviling human civilization. Droughts, floods, soil erosion, climate change, biodiversity loss – you name it, and beaver is on it. In this episode, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center share their semi-aquatic journey to beco...
Dec 11, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Brave 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 adv...
Nov 26, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Indigenous scholar and organizer Nick Estes explores how Indigenous land-based and Earth-centered societies are advancing regenerative solutions and campaigns to transform capitalism. “Eco-nomics” puts Indigenous leadership at the forefront of assuring a habitable planet. Featuring Nick Estes, Ph.D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), is a Professor at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota writers. In 2014, he ...
Nov 20, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. The Gender Equity and Reconciliation process seeks to heal the profound wounds around gender, sexuality, and relational intimacy. It b...
Nov 13, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast After accomplished stints as a journalist, author and diplomat, and studying theology at Yale Divinity School, Krista Tippett was struck by a significant gap in the media landscape—a lack of deep, intelligent conversations to explore the spiritual, ethical and moral aspects of human life. What began as a national public radio show in 2003 evolved into the multiple award-winning podcast “On Being” (“wisdom to replenish and orient in a tender, tumultuous time to be alive.”) Gifted with insatiable ...
Nov 08, 2024•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Through colonization, hyper capitalism, and unaddressed trauma, many of us have forgotten how to play our part in the orchestra of the natural world. Join a conversation between two remarkable activists and legal practitioners from different continents, working in different communities, but who happen to share a belief in the power of creative expression help us reconnect to the entire web of life. They discuss interdependence, forgotten ways of relating to each other and all species, and how we...
Oct 31, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast When we allow our hearts to be broken open by hearing the stories of our fellow human beings, we build community and compassion. That is the passionate message of Sister Simone Campbell, one of the most renowned figures in contemporary faith-based progressive activism. She and the other rebel Nuns on the Bus are touring the country, bridging divides, transforming politics and keeping the faith. Featuring Sister Simone Campbell is a poet, social justice attorney and one of the nation’s most influ...
Oct 25, 2024•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Oct 16, 2024•29 min•Ep 263•Transcript available on Metacast 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. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn mo...
Oct 02, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast These days, scientists are starting to talk like shamans and shamans are starting to talk like scientists. So says anthropologist and author Jeremy Narby. And, he says, we need to talk about talking – because words matter. In this episode, Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies speaks with Narby about how the very language and words we use reveal the topography and limits of our worldview, including Western culture’s adamant centuries-long but now increasingly discredited assumption that intel...
Sep 25, 2024•29 min•Ep 256•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Sep 18, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 generation...
Sep 10, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Housing is a human right, or so says the International Declaration of Human Rights. But could we organize our economies with that in mind? Across the country, communities have land and properties and people who need homes. What’s stopping us bringing them together in a way that increases community wealth and wellbeing for everyone? That’s the question we explore in this episode of our special series on community wealth building, produced in collaboration with the radio and tv show, Laura Flander...
Aug 29, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Collabora...
Aug 29, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 h...
Aug 29, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this special episode of the Bioneers, guest host Laura Flanders explores “Community Wealth Building,” a model that democratizes the economy, creates more cooperative businesses, better care for communities, and builds wealth for the many, not just the few. This episode features American political economist, historian, and author Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, along with India Pierce Lee about her work with the Collaborative in Cleveland, Ohio; and John McMicken, Executive Dire...
Aug 29, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 lead...
Aug 28, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast What does it mean to bring the “feminine” forward in leadership from diverse cultural and ethnic perspectives? How might a spectrum of views help us to integrate relational intelligence into all our leadership? This hour long special features poet Noris Binet; Nikki Silvestri, former Executive Director of Green for All and The People's Grocery and Pat McCabe, or Woman Stands Shining, a Navajo teacher working on Indigenous frameworks for gender and all of life.
Aug 21, 2024•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 (E...
Aug 21, 2024•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Global healing requires a spiritual transformation of every aspect of life. Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine, author/educator Matthew Fox and Joanna Macy, eco-philosopher and scholar of Buddhism speak of the profound interconnectedness of all life and the experience of joy, courage and community we need to engage in the healing of the world.
Aug 15, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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....
Aug 14, 2024•29 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Aug 08, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jul 31, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 17, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. Resources Jason McLennan – Fr...
Jul 10, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
