

Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature
Bioneers
The Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature is an award-winning series featuring breakthrough solutions for people and planet. The greatest social and scientific innovators of our time celebrate the genius of nature and human ingenuity. The kaleidoscopic scope covers biomimicry, ecological design, social and racial justice, women’s leadership, ecological medicine, indigenous knowledge, spirituality and psychology. It’s leading-edge, hopeful, charismatic, provocative, timely and timeless – like nothing you’ve heard before.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jul 23, 2025 • 30min
The Rising Anti-Monopoly Movement: Overcoming Economic Tyranny
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 a force that can challenge corporate power for the first time in decades?
Featuring
Stacy Mitchell, a Maine-based writer, strategist, and policy advocate whose work focuses on dismantling concentrated corporate power and building thriving communities and a healthy democracy, has played a leading role in today’s growing anti-monopoly movement. She is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) and the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, and co-author of the influential report: Amazon’s Stranglehold.
Resources
Stacy Mitchell – Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power | Bioneers 2024 Keynote
Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime
Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reade
Credits
Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
Written by: Kenny Ausubel
Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
Producer: Teo Grossman
Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Jul 16, 2025 • 30min
Democracy v. Plutocracy: Breaking Up is Hard to Do
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 BP-Weeks to survey the landscape of rising antitrust movements to break the stranglehold of corporate power and level the playing field for a democratized economy.
Featuring
Thom Hartmann, the top progressive talk show host in America for over a decade, a four-time Project Censored Award-winning journalist, and bestselling author. Learn more at his website.
Stacy Mitchell, Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which produces research and develops policy to counter corporate control and build thriving, equitable communities.
Maurice BP-Weeks, Co-Executive Director of ACRE (Action Center on Race and the Economy) where he works on campaigns to create equitable communities by dismantling systems of wealth extraction in Black and Brown communities.
The Hidden History of Monopolies by Thom Hartmann
Fighting Monopoly Power | Institute for Local Self-Reliance
All Life Is Organized Around Democracy | Thom Hartmann’s keynote address to the Bioneers 2020 Conference
Democracy vs. Plutocracy panel discussion (video) | Bioneers 2020 Conference
Our Economic Future | Bioneers Reader eBook
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Jul 9, 2025 • 30min
Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime
In this first part of a two-part program, we travel back and forth in time to explore the battle between democracy and plutocracy that goes back to the very founding of the United States.
The extreme concentration of corporate power and the prevalence of monopoly are indeed inarguable. If the solution is once again to throw the tea in the harbor, what does that look like in the 21st century?
In today’s new Gilded Age of rule by the wealthy, rising anti-trust movements are challenging the stranglehold of corporate monopoly.
Featuring
Thom Hartmann, the top progressive talk show host in America for over a decade, a four-time Project Censored Award-winning journalist, and bestselling author. Learn more at his website.
Stacy Mitchell, Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which produces research and develops policy to counter corporate control and build thriving, equitable communities.
Maurice BP-Weeks, Co-Executive Director of ACRE (Action Center on Race and the Economy) where he works on campaigns to create equitable communities by dismantling systems of wealth extraction in Black and Brown communities.
Resources
The Hidden History of Monopolies by Thom Hartmann
All Life Is Organized Around Democracy | Thom Hartmann’s keynote address to the Bioneers 2020 Conference
Democracy vs. Plutocracy panel discussion (video) | Bioneers 2020 Conference
Our Economic Future | Bioneers Reader eBook
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Jul 2, 2025 • 29min
Who Is an American? Is Our Democracy as Unequal as Our Economy?
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 with unusual potency onto whomever people see as “the other.” But is there also a deeper story? Perhaps the question to ask is: Who benefits? In this half hour, we hear from Heather McGhee of Demos. She sees a direct connection between today’s extreme inequality and this peak moment of racial panic and white anxiety.
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Jun 25, 2025 • 51min
A Conversation with David Rothenberg
Dive into a conversation between Bioneers senior producer J.P. Harpignies and David Rothenberg. David is a musician, composer, author, naturalist, philosopher, and an independent publisher. He’s been a unique and fascinating explorer of humanity’s connections to the natural world for more than four decades.
Watch the video version of this conversation
One of David’s unique forms of experimentation in his extensive travels has been not only his recordings of bird and whale and other animal songs, but his attempts to engage with other species in musical exchanges. Quite a few have been captured on film and discussed in his many books. David has released some 40 albums under his own name and collaborated with many prominent musicians. Someone recently said that David has “played with everyone from Peter Gabriel to Pauline Oliveros, Suzanne Vega, Scanner, cicadas, humpbacks, frogs, Estonian pond organisms” and many others.
JP invited David to recount some of the key episodes in his career trajectory, unpack some of his guiding ideals and passions, and regale us with anecdotes from an extremely full life.
To learn more about the extraordinary intelligence of life inherent in fungi, plants and animals, check out Bioneers' Earthlings newsletter. Each issue delves into captivating stories and research that promise to reshape your perception of our fellow Earthlings – and point toward a profound shift in how we all inhabit this planet together. You can subscribe at bioneers.org/earthlings

Jun 18, 2025 • 30min
When No News is Bad News: The Struggle to Save Local Journalism
The most critical feedback loop in a democracy is a free press and access to vital information. Yet decades of corporate consolidation allowed giant conglomerates to annihilate local news outlets and predatory hedge funds are leaving news deserts in their wake. In 2025, a fifth of people in the U.S. live with little or no access to local news and three quarters of newspaper jobs have been axed over the last 20 years. But new models are crystallizing to fill the void, thanks to innovating journalists and publishers.
Featuring
Larry Ryckman, co-founder and Editor of The Colorado Sun, was previously: Senior Editor at The Denver Post; Managing Editor at The Gazette in Colorado Springs; and City Editor at the Greeley Tribune.
Madeleine Bair, founder of El Tímpano, an award-winning civic media organization designed with and for the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities.
Jacob Simas, Oakland-based Community Journalism Director at Cityside Journalism Initiative.
Credits
Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
Written by: Claire Reynolds & Kenny Ausubel
Producer: Claire Reynolds
Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
Associate Producer: Emily Harris
Producer: Teo Grossman
Interview Recording Engineer: Rod Akil at KPFA studios
Production Assistance: Kaleb Wentzel Fisher
Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to for show notes and more.

Jun 11, 2025 • 30min
Raced and Classed: The Journey From Diversity to Equity
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 Jayaraman and Malkia Cyril.
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Jun 4, 2025 • 30min
Staying Alive: Reconciling Nature, Culture and Gay Rights
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, as he seeks to reconcile nature, culture, diversity and belonging.
Featuring
Taylor Brorby, a Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, is an award-winning, widely published writer and poet as well as a contributing editor at North American Review who also serves on the editorial boards of Terrain.org and Hub City Press. Taylor regularly speaks around the country on issues related to extractive economies, queerness, disability, and climate change, and is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land; Crude: Poems; Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience; and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America.
Resources
Video | Taylor Brorby – Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains
Learn more about Taylor Brorby at taylorbrorby.com
Credits
Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
Written by: Kenny Ausubel
Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
Producer: Teo Grossman
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

May 29, 2025 • 30min
Nature’s Intelligence: Coming Down from the Pedestal
Join anthropologist Jeremy Narby, known for exploring indigenous knowledge and its ties to Western science, as he delves into the evolving understanding of intelligence in nature. He discusses how language shapes our worldview, the intriguing bridge between scientific and shamanic wisdom, and the need for inclusive terminology that honors all life forms. Narby also challenges Western notions of identity and intelligence, advocating for a new lexicon that reflects our kinship with the natural world and recognizes the cognitive capabilities of plants and fungi.

May 21, 2025 • 30min
Legalizing Nature’s Rights: How Tribal Nations are Leading the Fastest Growing Environmental Movement in History
The Rights of Nature movement launched internationally in 2006 and is growing fast. Driven primarily by tribes and citizen-led communities, more than three dozen cities, townships and counties across the U.S. have adopted such laws to create legally enforceable rights for ecosystems to exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve.
Native American attorneys, Frank Bibeau and Samantha Skenandore, and legal movement leader Thomas Linzey report from the front lines how they are honing their strategies to protect natural systems for future generations.
Featuring
Frank Bibeau, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, is an activist and tribal attorney who works extensively on Chippewa treaty and civil rights, sovereignty and water protection.
Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER), an organization committed to advancing the legal rights of nature and environmental rights globally.
Samantha Skenandore (Ho-Chunk/Oneida), Attorney/Of-Counsel at Quarles & Brady LLP, has vast knowledge and experience in working on matters involving on both federal Indian law and tribal law.
Resources
Mari Margil and Thomas Linzey – Changing Everything: The Global Movement for the Rights of Nature
The Rights of Nature Movement in Indian Country and Beyond: From Grassroots to Mainstream
Bioneers Rights of Nature Deep Dive
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.