Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

As climate chaos and obscene inequality ravage people and planet, a new generation of visionaries is emerging to demand a bold solution: a Green New Deal. Is it a remedy that can actually meet the magnitude and urgency of this turning point in the human enterprise? With lifelong activist and politician Tom Hayden, and Demond Drummer of Policy Link.Featuring Tom Hayden (1939-2016) was one of the leading figures of the student, civil rights, anti-war and environmental movements of the 1960s, and went on to serve 18 years in the California legislature. Following his legislative career, he directed the Peace and Justice Resource Center. Demond Drummer is Managing Director for Equitable Economy at Policy Link, and a Fellow at New Consensus, a nonprofit working to develop and promote the Green New Deal that has advised many progressive leaders and organizations, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise Movement. ResourcesThe Green New Deal Bioneers Media HubGreen New Deal Overview | New ConsensusThe New Deal Wasn’t Intrinsically Racist by Adolph Reed Jr. | The New RepublicCredits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Editorial and Production Assistance: Monica Lopez Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Producer: Teo Grossman Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris 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.

You do what you eat. Groundbreaking medical research now shows that what we eat is directly connected to how we behave. Maggie Adamek's research for The Sugar Project tracks how the changing American diet has made profound health impacts on behavior, especially among our children. Transforming how we feed ourselves is showing that food is medicine that can change negative behavior dramatically. 

As author Michael Pollan observes: “The two biggest crises humanity faces today are tribalism and the environmental crisis. They both involve the objectifying of the other – whether that other is nature or other people.” How do we re-weave that web of relationships, and focus on our likenesses rather than our differences?In this program, racial justice advocates john a. powell, Eriel Deranger and Anita Sanchez explore how overcoming the illusion of separateness from nature and each other requires building bridges rather than burning them. They say the fate of the world depends on it.Featuring john a. powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Eriel Deranger (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation), Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action. Anita Sanchez, bestselling author, consultant, trainer and executive coach specializing in indigenous wisdom, diversity and inclusion, leadership, culture and promoting positive change in our world. 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.

Renowned storyteller, performer, author, activist and scholar Michael Meade weaves threads of timeless wisdom traditions into myths for today’s global crisis. Meade says each of us is woven into the soul of the world, and we’re uniquely needed at this mythic moment to become active agents in the co-creation, re-creation and re-imagination of culture and nature.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.

These days, scientists are starting to talk like shamans and shamans are starting to talk like scientists. So says anthropologist and author Jeremy Narby. And, he says, we need to talk about talking – because words matter. In this episode, Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies speaks with Jeremy Narby about how the very language and words we use reveal the topography and limits of our worldview, including Western culture’s adamant centuries-long but now increasingly discredited assumption that intelligence is restricted only to human beings.

How do we transform a vicious circle into a virtuous circle? How do we move from environmental degradation and the deterioration of human relations to restoration? From war to peace – from hatred to compassion – from isolation to community? How can one person make a crucial difference? Painter and professor Lily Yeh‘s approach to community healing takes that which is broken and creates something whole and wholly new and beautiful through public art. From Philadelphia to Rwanda, broken places are her canvases. People’s stories are the pigments. People’s talents and creativity are the tools. At the heart of her work is the transformation of human heart.Video of Lily Yeh speaking at Bioneers 2009This 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 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, artists and churches.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.

What would it feel like to live in a world where our built environment was as elegant as nature's designs? What if our living and working spaces nurtured our human communities and quality of life? Architect and designer Jason F. McLennan takes the revolution from the heart of nature and the human heart into our built environment. He is shifting the fateful civilizational inflection point we face - from degradation to regeneration - from fear to love. Featuring Jason F. McLennan, one of the world’s most influential visionaries in contemporary architecture and green building, is a highly sought-out designer, consultant and thought leader. A winner of Engineering News Record’s National Award of Excellence and of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize (which was, during its 10-year trajectory, known as “the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design”), Jason has been showered with such accolades as “the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ of the green building industry and a “World Changer” (by GreenBiz magazine).ResourcesJason McLennan Keynote Bioneers 2022 – From Reconciliation to RegenerationDeep Community Resilience: Preparing for the Coming Age, Place-By-Place | Jason F. McLennanChild-Centered Planning: A New Specialized Pattern Language Tool | Jason F. McLennanVisit the episode page for transcript and more information.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.

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 scales how to shift our relationship to nature and to culture – and climate-proof our cities and coasts.Featuring, Henk Ovink, the first Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. “Worldwide, water is the connecting issue, the number one global risk and the opportunity for comprehensive cultural change.” Ovink is Principal of Rebuild by Design and was Senior Advisor to the former US Presidential Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task. He was both Acting Director General of Spatial Planning and Water Affairs and Director National Spatial Planning for the Netherlands.Learn more about Henk Ovink and his work by visiting Rebuild by Design.Watch the Bioneers Conference talk from which some of the content in this episode was taken from.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.