Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

Our physical health is intimately tied to environmental health, and 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 the planet and ourselves by reconnecting with our true nature as empathic, nurturing social beings.

In the face of global climate disruption, two billion people worldwide will be challenged by too much water, and nearly another two billion by not enough. When you fight nature, you lose, says Henk Ovink, a designer, the Principal of Rebuild by Design, and the first ever Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He’s dramatically demonstrating on large scale...

Nontoxic hair color from the recipes of beetles, and a potential Alzheimer’s cure derived from applying nature’s operating instructions. The world-renowned “co-father of green chemistry,” John Warner, says: “We’re learning to do everything we want to do without poisoning people or planet.” He’s showing how we can follow nature’s lead to create good chemistry with nature and our own health. The res...

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.

Women-led movements arising around the world herald a profound shift that changes everything. Visionary women leaders Osprey Orielle-Lake, Leila Salazar and Lynne Twist report on the women leading the clean energy revolution in Africa, defending the Amazonian rainforest, and making peace in Liberia.

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...

In this episode, we speak with Julian Brave NoiseCat, an enrolled citizen of the Secwepemc, also known as Shuswap First Nation, in British Columbia. Julian Brave NoiseCat explores the importance of connection and relationship, to family, to history, to place and to culture, threading his own story throughout a larger narrative about the deep trauma Indigenous people have experienced through coloni...

Defending land rights and preserving tribal culture is difficult for North American tribes, especially for those that do not have sovereign nation-to-nation status with the federal government. The lack of recognition of a tribe’s nationhood as a self-governing entity (as defined by the U.S. Constitution) has been explicitly used as a tool to continue to prevent Native peoples from living on the mo...

There is a growing movement to redefine manhood, and to address ways that violence is baked into our cultural expectations of masculinity. Courageous, visionary men are rising to the challenge. One of those men is activist, writer and public speaker Kevin Powell. In this half-hour, Powell boldly and bravely discusses his experiences with toxic masculinity and his journey to redefine what it means...

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. An ancient “eco-nomics” today puts Indigenous leadership at the forefront of assuring a habitable planet. Featuring Nick Estes, Ph. D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), is Assistant Professor of Americ...

What if there are ways to sustainably harvest protein and nutritious vegetables from the seas in ways that restore coastlines, local economies, produces abundant food, and sequesters vast amounts of carbon dioxide? Pathfinding ocean farmer Bren Smith has cultivated a breakthrough method of near-shore aquaculture called 3-D Ocean Farming, which has the potential to transform our relationship with t...

In an era of climate change and sprawling human development, how can we conserve, manage and/or restore wilderness at scale? And what does “wilderness” mean in an epoch almost completely dominated by human activity? What role do wild places play, practically and spiritually? Hosted by Jason Mark, Editor of the Earth Island Journal. With: Bruce Hamilton, Deputy Executive Director of the Sierra Club...

Oakland, California, has had the reputation of being one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Then the Restorative Justice movement started boldly showing how quickly that reputation can be turned around by arresting the cycle of youth violence and incarceration early, in schools and juvenile justice policies. With: Restorative Justice leaders Fania Davis and Cameron Simmons. In remembranc...

***THIS IS AN EXCERPT*** Transformational women leaders are restoring societal balance by showing us how to reconnect relationships – not only among people – but between people and the natural world. This astounding conversation among diverse women leaders provides a fascinating window into the soulful depths of what it means to restore the balance between our masculine and feminine selves to brin...

Globally, women experience some of the harshest challenges in wartime and the climate crisis while simultaneously remaining caretakers to their families, communities, and the Earth. Zainab Salbi is a humanitarian, author and media host who has dedicated her life to empowering women on the frontlines in conflict zones and climate crisis zones. Her vision is that the fate of humanity depends on elev...

In neighborhoods across the country, citizens are building community resilience – one shovelful and one backyard at a time. Visionary citizen restorationists Trathen Heckman of Daily Acts and Jessie Lerner of Sustain Dane show how seemingly small acts like catching rain and growing food forests are turning green visions into action, with the help of local governments, school kids, businesses, arti...

Small farmers around the world are building an agro-ecological revolution based on self-sufficiency, food security, and freedom from fossil fuels and corporate control. In this program, we hear from two visionary agroecology innovators. Miguel Altieri is an agroecologist and entomologist at UC Berkeley who’s showing how farmers who embrace agroecology are building a movement based on self-sufficie...

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. For full transcript and show notes, visit: Resources Bioneers article,...

As we hurtle into the Sixth Age of Extinctions, we face the cataclysmic loss of half the world’s biological diversity. 80% of the remaining biodiversity is on Indigenous lands. Ethnobotanist and Indigenous rights advocate Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team tells us how scientists are helping protect the people who will protect the land, and the age-old wisdom that’s imperative for our fu...

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, 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 succ...

A quiet renaissance of serious medical research has once again arisen to study the therapeutic benefits of LSD and other psychedelics, including overcoming addiction and depression, and easing the existential terror of terminal illness. In this program, acclaimed journalist Michael Pollan shares a travelogue of his reportorial and personal journey with psychedelics. He slips through the rabbit hol...

How can we manifest the world we want, and who we want to be? Actor-activist Danny Glover and Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, former CEO of Green For All, show how one sure path to resilience is to build community and social movements. That requires learning how to reach out across our differences – and it gets really personal. Featuring Danny Glover is an award-winning actor, producer, humanitarian and po...

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 n...

The genius of nature’s design, recipes and principles is serving as the inspiration for redesigning human civilization. This Biomimicry revolution is spawning a next industrial revolution. Biomimicry masters Janine Benyus and Jay Harman illuminate the forefront of nature-inspired design, including human organization and the power of networks. Featuring: Janine Benyus is a biologist, author, innova...