Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

In 2018, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter shared a moving speech at a Bioneers Conference. Cullors is a performance artist and award-winning organizer from Los Angeles, and is one of the most effective and influential movement builders of our era. She was a key figure in the fight to force the creation of the first civilian oversight commission of the LA Sheriff’s Department, but is most widely known as one of the three original co-founders of Black Lives Matter and for her recent, best-selling book, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.”

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 B.P. 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.

The influences of Africans and Black Americans on food and agriculture is rooted in ancestral African knowledge and traditions of shared labor, worker coops and botanical polycultures. In this episode, we hear from Karen Washington and Bryant Terry on how Black Food culture is weaving the threads of a rich African agricultural heritage with the liberation of economics from an extractive corporate food oligarchy. The results can be health, conviviality, community wealth, and the power of self-determination.FeaturingKaren Washington, co-owner/farmer of Rise & Root Farm, has been a legendary activist in the community gardening movement since 1985. Renowned for turning empty Bronx lots into verdant spaces, Karen is: a former President of the NYC Community Garden Coalition; a board member of: the NY Botanical Gardens, Why Hunger, and NYC Farm School; a co-founder of Black Urban Growers (BUGS); and a pioneering force in establishing urban farmers’ markets.Bryant Terry is the Chef-in-Residence of MOAD, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and an award-winning author of a number of books that reimagine soul food and African cuisine within a vegan context. His latest book is Black Food: Stories, Art and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora. ResourcesThe Farmer and the Chef: A Conversation Between Two Black Food Justice ActivistsKaren Washington – 911 Our Food System Is Not WorkingWorking Against Racism in the Food SystemBlack Food: An Interview with Chef Bryant TerryThe Food Web NewsletterCredits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel and Arty Mangan Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Production Assistance: Monica Lopez Additional music: Ketsa 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.

The visionary primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall revolutionized primatology by showing how close our kinship is with the animal kin-dom. “Dr. Jane” has inspired the world to save the rapidly dwindling chimpanzee populations and their habitats. Her compelling vision to restore people, animals and planet is delivering real hope.

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.