Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

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 freedivers, pushing the limits of human endurance, is finding that saving the whales may become the story of the whales saving us.Additional Resources / Show NotesJames Nestor Keynote at Bioneershttps://bioneers.org/james-nestor-new-approaches-to-cracking-the-communication-of-whales-and-dolphins-bioneers-2016/

Award-winning painter Judy Baca describes how art can reconnect people to place, revive disappearing history, and repair cultural root systems. While working with at-risk youth to create The Great Wall of Los Angeles, the world's longest mural, Baca realized that restoring a disappeared river also meant restoring disappeared cultures.

Natural Magic is a one-hour special from Bioneers Radio that explores the time-tested processes, relationships and recipes that have allowed life to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution. Our guides are scientific and social innovators known as “the Bioneers.”Luminaries featured in the program include globally renowned biologist and educator David Suzuki, bestselling author and environmental entrepreneur Paul Hawken, biomimicry master Janine Benyus, clean energy expert Amory Lovins and author and climate leader Bill Mckibben.They say the solutions to our environmental challenges are largely present – if we just ask nature. They herald a revolution from the heart of nature – and the human heart.Also Featuring:Paul Stamets – Visionary myco-technologist working with mushrooms to heal the planetJohn Mohawk – Turtle Clan Seneca elder and educatorJeanne Achterberg – Pioneering researcher in medicine and psychologyJeremy Narby – Anthropologist and author who has worked closely with Native Amazonian peoplesDan Dagget – Pulitzer Prize nominated author for the book Beyond the Rangeland Conflict: Toward a West That WorksNina Simons – BIoneers Co-founderKenny Ausubel – BIoneers Co-founderNeil Harvey – Host

In the next 20 years, farmland ownership in the U.S. will shift on a continental scale—400 million acres. Yet 70% of American farmland is owned by people 65 and older. How can we help young, motivated agrarians become successful farmers to whom retiring organic farmers can transmit their wisdom? How can we invest in the democratization of our land base? These questions drive Agrarian Trust, started by Greenhorns founder Severine v T Fleming, one of the most visionary leaders in the young farmers’ movement.

In Western civilization, human beings are considered the exceptional species and uniquely intelligent. Yet science is consistently revealing our intimate biological kinship with all species, especially the primates with whom we share 99% of our DNA. Breakthrough primatologist researchers Roger and Deborah Fouts take us on their amazing journey with chimpanzees that shows that, not only are people animals, but animals seem to be people too.

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.

In July 2016, Jack Loeffler recorded Gary Snyder reading his updated version of 'Four Changes' in his home. This recorded version was prepared for and included in a major exhibition held at the History Museum of New Mexico at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe.The exhibition was entitled 'Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest', and Snyder's rendering of 'Four Changes' aptly conveyed how deeply the counterculture movement helped nurture the emerging environmental movement. The impact of this manifesto is as powerful today as it was a half century ago and could not be more timely.Four Changes at Age 50: A Celebration on the Environmental Movement’s First Manifesto of Contemplative EcologyIntroduction by Diana Hadley, Jack Loeffler, Gary Paul Nabhan and Jack ShoemakerIn the months before the first Earth Day in April 1970, mention of a prophetic manifesto seemed to crop up in nearly every serious discussion of what the nascent environmental movement should be and what values it should embody. That manifesto was conceived and shaped in the summer 1969, as poet Gary Snyder toured a number of college campuses around the United States and then entered into deeper discussions with a number of other poets, visionaries and activists in the San Francisco Bay area. Affectionately called “Chofu” by other radical environmentalists during that time, Snyder gradually refined their collective vision into a ten page draft document that became what we now know as Four Changes.Several features of this manifesto were then, and still are, unique in the canon of writings considered foundational to the environmental movement. Snyder’s literary gifts shine through the manifesto with prescient, poetic and playfully comic qualities to them. The tone seemed as fresh and as “out of the box” as Leaves of Grass must have sounded when Whitman first sowed it onto the American earth a century earlier. The manifesto called for a radical shift in our relationship with the planet through changing the way we perceive population, pollution, consumption, and the transformation of our society and ourselves. In this manner, it foreshadowed later expressions of ecological thought that we now call contemplative ecology and deep ecology. While it was in many ways anchored in Buddhist teachings, it was also precise in its understanding of modern ecological science and respectful of the place-based wisdom of the traditional ecological knowledge of the many indigenous cultures of the world. It did not privilege Western science over other ways of making sense of the environment, but welcomed dialogue and integration of many distinctive expressions. Four Changes was also rooted in a mature understanding of the political ecology of power dynamics and disparities in access to resources that were ravaging our planet, its biological and cultural diversity. Parts of it were so pertinent to these issues that it was read into the Congressional Record on April 5th, 1970--- two and a half weeks before Earth Day flags were unfurled all around the world. In that sense, it was perhaps the first robust articulation of what we now call a yearning for environmental justice. Still, the tone was hopeful—that humankind could learn to respect, learn from and embrace the other-than-human-world. As Snyder later paraphrased one of the tenets of Four Changes, “Revolutionary consciousness is to be found among the most ruthlessly exploited classes: animals, trees, water, air, grasses.”  It is time to heed the call of the prophetic Four Changes.

Psychoactive plants are at the heart of many traditional and Indigenous spiritual and religious traditions, yet many have been outlawed or severely restricted. How does society determine religious freedom? With: Jeremy Narby on Amazonian shamanic knowledge; and Jeffrey Bronfman, the U.S. legal and spiritual representative of Brazil's União do Vegetal (UDV) church, whose legal victories for its U.S. domestic use of ayahuasca have taken it to the Supreme Court; moderated by Bioneers' J.P. Harpignies.

There are two great Will Allens in organic agriculture. One is a 6’7” former professional basketball player and founder of Growing Power in Milwaukee, the renowned urban agriculture training center. The other Will Allen is an organic farming pioneer and activist who started out as a professor at UC Santa Barbara, but was fired and jailed for his anti-Vietnam war activism. No longer able to work in academia, he took up farming following in his father’s footsteps.Will’s zeal for justice and reform was transferred to agriculture. He founded the Sustainable Cotton Project (SCP) in 1990, which helped farmers transition to organic while reducing farmworker exposure to pesticides. SCP created markets for organic cotton selling to major manufacturers like Patagonia, Esprit, Levis, Marks and Spencer, and Nike.Understanding that war creates more victims than heroes, Will became a founding member of Farms Not Arms (now the Farmer Veteran Coalition), which helps veterans heal from the trauma of war by training them for jobs in agriculture.Will moved from California to Vermont to farm and became active in the Vermont GMO labeling law campaign. He farms with his wife Kate Duesterberg on 40 acres, producing a diversity of vegetables and fruits, grains, oil sunflower, dry beans, and ornamental and cut flowers. The farm has a certified kitchen producing organic products, and an organic coffee shop. The Cedar Circle Farm educational program hosts over a thousand school kids each year.I sat down with Will at the 2016 Eco Farm Conference to talk about his work with Regeneration Vermont that promotes climate-friendly agriculture, social justice for farmworkers, stewardship of the natural environment and the production of healthy food. At the age of 80, Will is still a vital and transformative force, steadily pushing the food system to be more accountable, more in tune with nature and to be in service of human and ecosystem health.Listen to the excerpt of my interview with Will Allen below.

Amy Emerson, Director of Clinical Research at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS); Martin Lee, Director of Project CBD; and Ralph Metzner, legendary psychedelic research pioneer, share their insights into the state of knowledge about the potential curative properties of psychedelic substances.