Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

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. Wha...

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 Bi...

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, inclu...

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 neme...

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...

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 seri...

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...

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...

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 Pi...

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 conversat...

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 teac...

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 leadi...

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.

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 Nois...

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 C...

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 Fa...

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 histo...

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, cre...

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 wi...

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...

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 Eve Ensler and three men working to change men and change the story: Tony Porter, co...

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,...

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 histo...

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 Financia...

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 thi...