Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

To transform our culture from its focus on dominance and hierarchy to one of connection, empathy and collaboration, it’s vital that we re-envision the essential (or archetypal) masculine, which changes everything. This rarely tackled topic is the subject of a deeply authentic dialogue among Playwright and activist Eve Ensler and three men working to change men and change the story: Tony Porter, co-founder, A Call To Men; Dallas Goldtooth, Indigenous activist, member of the 1491’s Native American comedy troupe; George Lipsitz, board president, African American Policy Forum.This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

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.FeaturingTaylor 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.ResourcesTaylor Brorby's keynote Bioneers 2024 – Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great PlainsLearn more about Taylor Brorby at taylorbrorby.comThis is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

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

How are donors leveraging effective change beyond traditional pathways and norms? From shareholder activism to investment strategies and disinvestment campaigns, explore how foundations can be reshaped to be far more effective. Hosted by Jen Sokolove, Program Director, Compton Foundation. With: Lauren Embrey, President/CEO, Embrey Family Foundation; Tom Van Dyck, Senior Vice President and Financial Consultant, SRI Wealth Management Group at RBC Wealth Management; Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Senior Director of Membership & Communications, Women Donors Network; Kristin Hull, CEO, Nia Global Solutions.Recorded Friday, October 17, 2014 at the national Bioneers Summit Conference in San Rafael, California.

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 learn more.

Few people know how a hostage-taking incident transformed a shy housewife from the working-class community near Niagara Falls into one of the founding mothers of the environmental justice movement. Spark-plug community organizer Lois Gibbs traces the electrifying arc that led from sick children to an international rallying cry for human rights. Because, says Gibbs, “It is just not right morally or ethically that somebody with a corporate interest, with a dollar interest, is making a decision each and every day in this country about who lives and who dies.”

There is a growing movement to redefine manhood, and to address ways that violence is baked into our cultural expectations of masculinity. Courageous, visionary men are rising to the challenge. One of those men is activist, writer and public speaker Kevin Powell. In this half-hour, Powell boldly and bravely discusses his experiences with toxic masculinity and his journey to redefine what it means to be a man.Kevin Powell - Re-defining Manhood: A Message to Men, to Boys, to Us All | Bioneers 2018 KeynoteTo find out more about Kevin Powell and his work, please visit his website.This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Ethnobotanist and Indigenous rights advocate Mark Plotkin discusses the critical need to protect biodiversity on Indigenous lands. He highlights the collaboration between scientists and indigenous communities in preserving traditional knowledge and safeguarding the Amazon rainforest. The podcast explores the challenges of conservation efforts, the role of indigenous peoples as guardians of biodiversity, and the importance of alliances to protect the environment and indigenous cultures.

Writer, naturalist and activist Terry Tempest Williams asks “Can we love ourselves, each other and the Earth enough to change?” She invokes our deepest humanity to honor and protect the wilderness that’s the cauldron of evolution – and of our own imagination. “Our power lies in the love of our homelands,” she tells us in this eloquent, heartfelt tour-de-force, and protecting the wild requires bringing democracy home.Featuring Terry Tempest Williams, one of the greatest living authors from the American West, is also a longtime award-winning conservationist and activist, who has taken on, among other issues, nuclear testing, the Iraq War, the neglect of women’s health, and the destruction of nature, especially in her beloved “Red Rock” region of her native Utah and in Alaska. Find out more about Terry Tempest Williams and how you can engage with her campaigns and efforts by visiting her website. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

What’s it like to be in someone else’s skin? What if the color of the skin is different – say, black and white? What might happen when the descendants of a white slave trader and of black people who were enslaved meet? That is the brave and wrenching journey embraced by Thomas DeWolf, whose white ancestors were once the nation’s biggest slave traders, and Belvie Rooks and Dedan Gills, descendants of African people who were enslaved. Together they depict their remarkable journey to discover what healing looks like.This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.