Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

In the late 20th century, a handful of scientists proved that aquatic mammals have advanced communication capabilities and a consciousness strikingly similar to humans. Author and adventurer James Nestor leads us on a deep dive into the mystery of marine mammal consciousness, and the story of how a small band of freedivers, pushing the limits of human endurance, is finding that saving the whales m...

Natural Magic is a one-hour special from Bioneers Radio that explores the time-tested processes, relationships and recipes that have allowed life to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution. Our guides are scientific and social innovators known as “the Bioneers.” Luminaries featured in the program include globally renowned biologist and educator David Suzuki, bestselling author and environme...

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.

In the next 20 years, farmland ownership in the U.S. will shift on a continental scale—400 million acres. Yet 70% of American farmland is owned by people 65 and older. How can we help young, motivated agrarians become successful farmers to whom retiring organic farmers can transmit their wisdom? How can we invest in the democratization of our land base? These questions drive Agrarian Trust, starte...

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. Breakthrough primatologist researchers Roger and Deborah Fouts take us on their amazing journey with chimpanzees that shows that, not only are people...

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 moveme...

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby’s life’s work has involved reconciling Western scientific views and assumptions with those of Indigenous cultures around the world. In this interview excerpt, Bioneers Senior Producer and author J.P. Harpignies talks to Narby about intelligence in nature, the limitations of language and more.

Four extraordinary women leaders share their perspectives on how to break through the stalemates that impede progress to build a world in which we can all thrive. They work in different spaces – from challenging governments and corporations to defending Indigenous people’s rights, education reform, movement building and investing in green businesses. With: Eriel Deranger, Communications Manager of...

Hosted by Atossa Soltani, Founder and Executive Director of Amazon Watch, among the most effective groups in the world conserving the Amazon and its peoples. Learn about the struggles to preserve some of the last large-scale vibrant ecosystems on Earth, crucial to the diversity of life on our planet, the climate and to our own species’ survival. Kris Tompkins describes the remarkable work she and...

Innovations usually arise locally. If conditions are right, they spread globally. That story is playing out around the world today. In India, human rights activist Mallika Dutt designed an elegant media campaign that successfully interrupts domestic violence live in real time. High school science educator Jay Vavra helped his San Diego students save endangered species in Africa by using simple gen...

The late Terence McKenna was one of the most extraordinary personalities ever associated with visionary plants. One of the most gifted orators of the late 20th Century, he was a fascinatingly paradoxical figure: an absolutely charming but somewhat misanthropic mystic, a blindingly erudite genius who never achieved mainstream recognition, and a down-to-earth guy who advanced a range of astonishing...

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 net...

In July 2016, Jack Loeffler recorded Gary Snyder reading his updated version of 'Four Changes' in his home. This recorded version was prepared for and included in a major exhibition held at the History Museum of New Mexico at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. The exhibition was entitled 'Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest', and Snyder's rendering of 'Four Changes' aptly conveyed how...

There are two great Will Allens in organic agriculture. One is a 6’7” former professional basketball player and founder of Growing Power in Milwaukee, the renowned urban agriculture training center. The other Will Allen is an organic farming pioneer and activist who started out as a professor at UC Santa Barbara, but was fired and jailed for his anti-Vietnam war activism. No longer able to work in...

Psychoactive plants are at the heart of many traditional and Indigenous spiritual and religious traditions, yet many have been outlawed or severely restricted. How does society determine religious freedom? With: Jeremy Narby on Amazonian shamanic knowledge; and Jeffrey Bronfman, the U.S. legal and spiritual representative of Brazil's União do Vegetal (UDV) church, whose legal victories for its U.S...

Short excerpt from Matthew Dillon of Seed Matters at Bioneers 2012, on how grassroots seed saving is an important political act.

Does our very survival now depend on our ability to understand the facts of life - nature's operating instructions - and how to live by them? Join the Center for Ecoliteracy's Fritjof Capra, Zenobia Barlow and Esther Cook to learn how experiential, participatory education in the environment is revolutionizing education from kindergarten through high school through an education of the heart. (pic f...

Breakthrough food literacy initiatives are transforming communities, bringing people together in meaningful conversations. Learn how to design an effective food literacy program for your community, organization or school. With: Kirk Bergstrom, Executive Director, Nourish Initiative; Alyson Wylie, Health Education Specialist, Center for Nutrition and Activity Promotion, California State University,...

The climate crisis is a crisis of governance and leadership. Will we move rapidly enough to realign our policies, politics and economy to stabilize the climate? Creative and innovative people from all walks of life are stepping forward to address the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. Community organizers Susan Marshall and John Fogarty are taking power local. Youth advocate Alec Loorz is...

For thousands of years, First Peoples have successfully managed the complex reciprocal relationships between biological and human cultures using Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Yet no prior human civilization has ever faced the globalized ecological collapse occurring now. In the face of unprecedented pressures on their homelands and ways of life, indigenous leaders Enei Begaye, Dune Lanka...

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 brin...

Shailja Patel's unique artistry is a provocative global mash-up of genres. Shes a slam poetry champion and star of her award-winning, one-woman play Migritude about the intricate webs of global migration and cultural identity. As an acclaimed poet of South Asian and Kenyan ancestry, through her fearless art she embodies the authentic voices of women, South Asians and Africans who are otherwise sel...

“And so, the idea was how do you harness this capitalist engine to create a more broadly shared prosperity? And once they decided to do that, then they said, well, what do we do with this wealth if we’re going to make it more broadly shared? Do we just have everyone make more income? And they said, no. It makes more sense; let’s think about what are the things that people need in their lives.” Des...

Did medicine's separation from nature propel our health care system into its current crisis? Join Dr. Andrew Weil and nurse and health activist Charlotte Brody as they describe how Ecological Medicine reunites the interdependence of medicine and nature, and restores the feminine principle in healing.

What would life be like if we could hear the land ask us to be a certain way, a way that leads us and the Earth back to wholeness and health? Native American activists, educators, and leaders Jeannette Armstrong,Leslie Gray, and Katsi Cook share an inspiring Earth-honoring vision of what it means to "re-indigenize" ourselves.