Bioneers: Revolution From The Heart Of Nature | Bioneers Radio Series

Today in the fossil fuel-induced age of escalating climate disruption, the joker in the deck is the climate imperative to transition rapidly off fossil fuels worldwide. Clean energy has reached the proverbial tipping point - and the smart money is hot on the trail of the clean energy revolution. Entrepreneur and visionary change-maker Danny Kennedy says clean energy not only makes dollars, it makes sense, and this literal power struggle could take us from energy monopoly to energy democracy. 

With climate-driven disasters becoming the new normal, building resilience is the grail. Communities around the world are developing models created out of practical necessity. We hear on-the-ground stories from two different communities building resilience in the wake of serial disasters. Estrella Santiago Perez and her innovative community rights organization ENLACE have helped organize a collection of marginalized neighborhoods in San Juan, Puerto Rico to overcome the twin catastrophes of Hurricane Maria and a failed government. And far away in the fire-ravaged communities near California’s relatively well-off wine country, Trathen Heckman helped lead the nonprofit grassroots group Daily Acts to build a resilience network from the ground up with engaged citizens action, civil society groups and Sonoma County government agencies.

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 the source of our authentic power comes from. We have to go deeper. She also explores histories of privilege, religion, and identity in Utah, and how reconciling her experiences with these cultural strands have helped unleash and shape her voice as a storyteller who translates the voice of nature and speaks for justice. 

An hour long special on how 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 bring about wholeness, justice and true restoration of people and planet. Alice Walker, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Nina Simons, Sarah Crowell, Joanna Macy and Akaya Winwood

Ever since women won the right to vote in 1920, they have been trying to pass an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ensure equality and justice in the eyes of the law. The Third Wave women’s movement might just make it a reality. MomsRising Director Joan Blades, attorney Kimberle Crenshaw, and ERA Coalition President Jessica Neuwirth tell us why the amendment is so important to address discrimination and harassment in the workplace and beyond.

How do we change the story of corrosive racial inequity? First, we have to understand the stories we tell ourselves. In this program, racial justice innovators john a. powell and Heather McGhee show how empathy, honesty and the recognition of our common humanity can change the story to bridge the racial divides tearing humanity and the Earth apart. 

After World War II, the U.S. government worked with industry to create a single-use, disposable consumer culture as a way to ensure ongoing market prosperity. Who benefited? Consumer product companies like Coca-Cola, and the fossil fuel industry, whose petrochemicals are at the source. The result? Plastic pollution is now found in virtually every living organism – including humans - and is one of the worst threats to ocean ecosystems. Now, a global resistance movement is rising to abolish petrochemical plastics and to shift to a zero-waste, circular economy. With: Anna Cummins, Deputy Director and Co-Founder of the Five Gyres Institute.

New, democratized access to powerful analytical and mapping tools is transforming our understanding of the natural world – and with it, our ability to meaningfully conserve, protect and restore our collective home – the biosphere. In this program, we explore the boundless possibilities of digital maps and platforms with Rebecca Moore, visionary founder of Google Earth Outreach and Google Engine. 

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 "social medicine" means dismantling harmful social structures that directly lead to poor health outcomes, and building new structures that promote health and healing.

What we do to each other, we do to the Earth. To protect our common home, we’re being called upon to bridge our differences to create beloved community and peaceful coexistence. A new generation of visionary change-makers is reframing the race conversation, and designing new tools to transform our unconscious biases and create justice. With Racial justice pathfinders Rinku Sen, Saru Jarayaman and Malkia Cyril.

Are plants intelligent? If we knew their language what might they tell us? Potawatomi Indigenous ecologist and author Robin Kimmerer and evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano merge Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Western science for a surprising trip into the minds of mosses and chili seeds and the songs of corn. They agree what we really need today is a revolution in values, an “Honorable Harvest” of gratitude and reciprocity with our plant kin.

How can a grocery store lift a community out of poverty? The People’s Grocery provides creative solutions to community health problems that stem from a lack of access to and knowledge about healthy, fresh foods. The personal journey of former Executive Director and home-grown food justice leader Nikki Henderson-Silvestri brings heart, soul and love to community health and wealth for the low-income community of West Oakland, California.

In today’s radically shifting world, the name of the game is resilience – the capacity of both human and ecological systems to absorb disturbance, roll with the punches and come up standing. Resilience arises from building community – enduring relationships and networks that hold cultural memory in the same way seeds regenerate a forest after a fire. Indigenous leaders Ilarion “Larry” Merculieff and Guadalupe Avila come from old-growth cultures that have sustained community over centuries and millennia.

As the creation story of Judeo-Christian beliefs, the biblical recounting of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden has long had profound influence around the world. So what’s it like to be named Eve? World-renowned playwright and activist Eve Ensler explores her own personal journey into her namesake. The provocative author of “The Vagina Monologues” and founder of V-Day to end violence against women suggests there’s another story beneath the traditional story. For her, it’s both very personal – and very political.

There are periods when history comes to a boil – when powerful forces of both destruction and creation result in massive social change. In 2020, the Black Lives Matter Movement emerged as the biggest protest movement in American history, and resounded worldwide. Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, tells the story of the birth of this powerful movement for racial justice, and shares her vision of a world where black people are actually free, a world that we all deserve to live in.

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 free divers, pushing the limits of human endurance, is finding that saving the whales may become the story of the whales saving us.

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.

How do we create peace? What can we learn from indigenous societies who have addressed this profound question over thousands of years? From North America to the Kalahari, Jeannette Armstrong, Marlowe Sam, Evan Pritchard, Kxao=Oma and Megan Biesele share powerful stories of how indigenous social technologies have succeeded in resolving conflict, and still are.

Communities around the country are working to create a new food future founded in health, justice and ecological wellbeing. Community activists Malik Kenyatta Yakini and Oran Hesterman are transforming Detroit through urban agriculture and helping low-income and working families access healthy food. Cathryn Couch works with young people to cook and deliver healthy meals to people who are ill and struggling to put food on the table with a model program using food as medicine.

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.