Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

From nature’s viewpoint, people are one species. Categories such as race, class, nation, religion and even many gender roles are human constructs. Yet the world is riven by exploitation and violence driven by these perceived divisions at an epic moment of demographic change toward the U.S. becoming a majority minority nation. john a. powell, Director of U.C. Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair an...

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...

LaDonna Redmond and Wil Bullock live in communities where 12-year-olds suffer heart attacks, and where it's easier to buy a semi-automatic weapon than an organic tomato. But they are changing that reality, providing access to fresh, healthy foods, and re-establishing the connections between food and community.

Garbage in, garbage out, as the early computer innovators remarked about information. A vital free press is the single most important feedback loop in a democracy. New media including especially the Internet have challenged the supremacy of corporate media concentration and junk news. A brave new wave of activists such as Brad Friedman, John Stauber and Joan Blades are using digital media to resto...

"There is an environmental movement and there is a social justice movement. If they could truly become one movement the transformation would be unimaginable. When a black child in Oakland winces at the thought of an ancient tree being cut down in northern California, and when an ex logger in northern California winces at the thought of a teenager, a black teenager in Oakland, being cut down on tho...

From the microbes to the mammals, all life shares far more in common than what makes us different. In other words, it’s all relatives. If we knew that literally we are water, that we are mushrooms, that we are stardust—instead of shredding the web of life, might we start acting as if we have relatives? Bioneers Brock Dolman, Paul Stamets and Brian Thomas Swimme reveal inspiring reflections in the...

In 2018, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter shared a moving speech at a Bioneers Conference. Cullors is a performance artist and award-winning organizer from Los Angeles, and is one of the most effective and influential movement builders of our era. She was a key figure in the fight to force the creation of the first civilian oversight commission of the LA Sheriff’s Department, but...

A movement of rural communities in El Salvador called La Coordinadora has led the way in community-based disaster preparedness, building a grassroots democracy movement, and influencing national policy. It’s featured in the new film and book This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. Hosted by Mariel Nanasi, Executive Director/President, New Energy Economy. With: Estela Hernández, El Sa...

What do octopuses, bees, plants and slime molds have in common with human beings? For one thing, they exhibit the ability to solve problems and make decisions. Author and anthropologist Jeremy Narby reveals his astonishing research on the profound intelligence active throughout nature. After all, how could people be intelligent if the nature that created us were not even more intelligent?

Ecology is the superb art of interdependent relationships. Author and physicist Fritjof Capra, Native American educator Jeannette Armstrong, and medical researcher Jeanne Achterberg describe the complex and interconnected relationships inherent in living systems that can help heal our environment, our societies, and us.

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. With: Michael Meade and John Densmore.

The brilliant, award-winning contributor to the New York Times Magazine, Journalism professor and best-selling writer Michael Pollan, author most recently (May 2018) of How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, had a fascinating conversation back in 2001 with renowned anthropologist and ethnobotani...

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 Grandmother...

What does governance look like when it aligns with the ground truths of nature? How does culture change? What models exist? Hosted by Kirsten Schwind, co-founder/Director of Bay Localize. With: Jessie Lerner, Executive Director, Sustain Dane in Madison, Wiscon- sin, a state with eco-municipalities based on Sweden’s model; Trathen Heckman, Board President, Transition U.S., founder of Daily Acts.

Until recently, it has been very difficult to get approval for serious research into “mind-manifesting” plants and drugs. Leading figures in the field describe that potential and the status of current research. Hosted by Kat Harrison; with Ralph Metzner, Charles Grob, Mariavittoria Mangini, Ph. D., and Alicia Danforth.

With the illustrious anthropologist Francis Huxley of the renowned Huxley clan; a leading figure in Native American and American Studies, the late, beloved professor John Mohawk; and groundbreaking anthropological thinker and author Jeremy Narby. Practices by different Indigenous people around the world were labeled "shamanism" by anthropologists and dismissed as irrational superstition, but in th...

A rare interview with Jeremy Narby and the late Francis Huxley, legendary anthropologists in conversation with Bioneers Radio Host and consulting producer Neil Harvey. The interview took place at a Bioneers conference in 2002.

What if we stop perceiving power and privilege as limited commodities? How do we collaborate in ways that generate dynamic power and create win-win strategies? Join J. Miakoda Taylor, Founding Director of Fierce Allies, in this interactive exploration.

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 so...

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 Con...

“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 The solution to climate change is under our feet. Rebecca Burgess, of the Fibershed Project, explains how drawing carbon from the atmosphere and capturing it in the soil can reverse climate change. Rebecca, who is developing climate friendly local cloth...

Join a diverse circle of women media-makers to hear how each learned to trust her own voice. They share stories and discuss effective strategies that can be applied to lift the voices of women of every age and perspective. Hosted by Jodie Evans, women’s media champion. With: Jensine Larsen, founder of World Pulse; Neema Namadamu, internationally renowned Congolese civil society leader, founder of...

Shamanic botanical traditions and modern reinventions propose that certain plants may offer people a direct line to a profound ecological intelligence. Hosted by Bioneers Associate Producer J.P. Harpignies, editor of Visionary Plant Consciousness; with ethnobotanist, artist and plant-person extraordinaire Kat Harrison; CODEPINK co-founder, and board member of the Drug Policy Alliance, Jodie Evans;...

At the Bioneers Conference in 2016, we spoke with visionary law professor and changemaker Kimberlé Crenshaw. A respected attorney, Crenshaw popularized the concept of intersectionality and was instrumental in the creation of the #SayHerName campaign to raise awareness about the many women and girls who are killed by the police.

The world has entered a period of radical creative destruction — of breakdown and breakthrough. The very fate of human civilization hangs in the balance. Where have we gone so wrong? Could it be our cosmology itself, our view of our place in the natural and cosmic order? As author Richard Tarnas observes, “World views create worlds.” Is a fundamental transformation of our civilization’s world view...