Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

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 historical nonviolent change-makers understood: social movements must be grounded in an ethic of love. She founded the Revolutionary Love Project, and has emerged as one of the most important voices of the American Sikh community, and a highly influential faith leader on the national stage. Valarie Kaur, born into a family of Sikh farmers who settled in California in 1913, is a seasoned civil rights activist, award-winning filmmaker, lawyer, faith leader, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, which seeks to champion love as a public ethic and wellspring for social action.This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.For transcript and more about this program, visit: https://bioneers.org/laboring-for-justice-see-no-stranger/CreditsExecutive Producer: Kenny AusubelWritten by: Monica Lopez and Kenny AusubelSenior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie WelchHost and Consulting Producer: Neil HarveyProducer: Teo GrossmanProgram Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

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 find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

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, create a healthy sustainable environment and make life beautiful and fun.This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

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.FeaturingSaru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, co-founded (after 9/11) the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. Saru has won many prestigious awards for her advocacy and is the author of four books including: One Fair Wage: Ending All Subminimum Pay in America and Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning.ResourcesSaru Jayaraman – The Great Revolution: What A Worker Power Moment Can Mean for Climate Justice | Bioneers 2023 KeynoteSaru Jayaraman – We the People: Workers Rising for Fair Wages | Bioneers 2017 KeynoteThis is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

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.

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.Featuring Anna Cummins, Deputy Director and Co-Founder of the Five Gyres Institute. With more than 20 years experience in environmental non-profit work—including marine conservation, coastal watershed management, community relations, and bilingual and sustainability education—Anna is an expert in the field.Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Monica Lopez and Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Producer: Teo Grossman Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Additional music was made available by Pictures of a Floating World, FreeMusicArchive.org Mark Barrott, MarkBarrott.com This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Youth movements are rising to restore people and planet. De’Anthony Jones, a former President of the Environmental Students Organization at Sacramento State, Chloe Maxmin, co-founder of Divest Harvard, and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, hip-hop artist and Youth Director of Earth Guardians, say there’s no better time to be born than now because this generation gets to rewrite history. It could be known as the generation that brought forth a healthy, just, sustainable world for every generation to come.This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

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 this episode, we hear from Pastor on how shocks to the system are precipitating a great awakening and growing movements to transform the economy to our economy.FeaturingManuel Pastor, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at USC and Director of its Equity Research Institute, has long been one of the most important scholars and activists working on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He has held many prominent academic posts, won countless prestigious awards and fellowships for his activism and scholarship, and is the author and co-author of many important, highly influential tomes.ResourcesSolidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter | 2021 Book by Manuel Pastor and Chris BennerSolidarityEconomics.org | Joint Project of the Equity Research Center (ERI) at the University of Southern California and the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa CruzManuel Pastor – Solidarity Economics: Mutuality, Movements and Momentum | 2021 Bioneers Keynote AddressSolidarity Economics: Our Economy, Our Planet, Our Movements | 2021 Bioneers PanelBioneers Reader: Our Economic Future | Free eBookThis is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

In this age of global weirding where climate disruption has tumbled the Goldilocks effect into unruly surges of too much and too little water, the restoration of beavers offers ancient nature-based solutions to the tangle of challenges bedeviling human civilization. Droughts, floods, soil erosion, climate change, biodiversity loss - you name it, and beaver is on it.In this episode, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center share their semi-aquatic journey to becoming Beaver Believers. They are part of a passionate global movement to bring back our rodent relatives who show us how to heal nature by working with nature.For more information and transcript, visit: https://bioneers.org/beaver-believers-how-to-restore-planet-water/ResourcesBeaver Believer: How Massive Rodents Could Restore Landscapes and Ecosystems At ScaleFire and Water: Land and Watershed Management in the Age of Climate ChangeBrock Dolman – Basins of Relations: A Reverential Rehydration RevolutionFrom Kingdom to Kin-dom: Acting As If We Have Relatives Brock Dolman, Paul Stamets and Brian Thomas SwimmeThe WATER Institute’s Beaver in California readerThis is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast. 

Jessica Alva Khadija Rose Britton. Hanna Harris. Anthonette Christine Cayedito. If you haven't heard of these women, it’s no surprise. They’re four of the untold number of Indigenous women and girls who have been murdered, kidnapped or gone mysteriously missing. A significant number of victims are from communities that are subjected to the harmful presence of fossil fuel and mining companies. The extractive industry is ravaging Native nations where oil and blood have long run together. Add to this a dysfunctional police and legal hierarchy that leaves Indigenous women and their families with little support during the first crucial hours when they go missing, and little recourse to prosecute predators for their crimes.In this program, powerful Native women leaders reveal the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and describe how they are taking action and building growing movements, including with non-Native allies. Morning Star Gali, Ozawa Bineshi Albert, Simone Senogles, Kandi White, and Casey Camp Horinek.  ***These stories are shocking, harrowing and heartbreaking. But then again,  when your heart breaks, the cracks are where the light shines through.RESOURCESThe Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native WomenSovereign Bodies InstituteMMIW USAThe Intercept: A New Film Examines Sexual Violence as a Feature of the Bakken Oil BoomRestoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples: MMIW InitiativeThe Mendocino Voice: Community groups begin painting mural honoring Khadijah Britton and highlighting MMIW in UkiahThis is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.