Over 7,000 languages are spoken around the world. Each one reflects a rich ecosystem of ideas - seeds that grow into a multitude of worldviews. Today, many of these immeasurably precious knowledge systems are endangered - often spoken by just a handful of people. We hear from two Indigenous language champions, Jeannette Armstrong and Rowen White. They reflect on the words, stories, songs and ideas that influence our very conception of nature, and our place within it.

This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.

Jeannette Armstrong, Ph.D., (Okanagan) is an Indigenous author, teacher, ecologist, and a culture bearer for her Native language. She is also Co-founder of the En'owkin Centre.

Rowen White (Mohawk) is a seed keeper and farmer, and part of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network. She operates a living seed bank called Sierra Seeds.

En’owkin Centre

Indigenous Seed Keepers Network

Sierra Seeds

Language Keepers: The Struggle for Indigenous Language Survival in California

Hand Talk, Native American Sign Language

Native Seed Rematriation

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel

Produced by: Cathy Edwards

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Associate Producer: Emily Harris

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Program Engineers: Kaleb Wentzel Fisher and Emily Harris

Producer: Teo Grossman

Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

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.

This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.

Kate Lundquist, co-director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute and the Bring Back the Beaver Campaign in Sonoma County, is a conservationist, educator and ecological artist who works with landowners, communities and resource agencies to uncover obstacles, identify strategic solutions, and generate restoration recommendations to assure healthy watersheds, water security, listed species recovery and climate change resiliency.

Brock Dolman, co-founded (in 1994) the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center where he co-directs the WATER Institute. A wildlife biologist and watershed ecologist, he has been actively promoting “Bringing Back Beaver in California” since the early 2000s. He was given the Salmonid Restoration Federation’s coveted Golden Pipe Award in 2012: “…for his leading role as a proponent of “working with beavers” to restore native habitat.

Beaver Believer: How Massive Rodents Could Restore Landscapes and Ecosystems At Scale

Fire and Water: Land and Watershed Management in the Age of Climate Change

Brock Dolman – Basins of Relations: A Reverential Rehydration Revolution

From Kingdom to Kin-dom: Acting As If We Have Relatives Brock Dolman, Paul Stamets and Brian Thomas Swimme

The WATER Institute’s Beaver in California reader

Bioneers – Where Water, Flows Life Thrives - Ensuring Drought Resilience and Water Security for Farms, People and Ecosystems

We trek into the ancient old-growth forest where the trees reveal an ecological parable: A forest is a mightily interwoven community of diverse life that runs on symbiosis. With: Doctors Suzanne Simard and Teresa Ryan, ecologists whose work has helped reveal an elaborate tapestry of kinship, cooperation and mutual aid.

This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.

Dr. Sm’hayetsk Teresa Ryan is Gitlan, Tsm’syen. Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Science Lecturer at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry, Forest & Conservation Sciences. As a fisheries/aquatic/forest ecologist, she is currently investigating relationships between salmon and healthy forests.

Dr. Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and author of the bestselling, Finding the Mother Tree, is a highly influential, researcher on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence.

Forest Wisdom, Mother Trees and the Science of Community | Bioneers Podcast

Suzanne Simard – Dispatches From the Mother Trees | Bioneers 2021 Keynote

Suzanne Simard – Dealing with Backlash Against Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change | Bioneers 2024 Keynote

The Wood Wide Web: The Intelligent Underground Mycelial Network | Bioneers interview with Suzanne Simard

Unraveling the Secrets of Salmon: An Indigenous Exploration of Forest Ecology and Nature’s Intelligence | Bioneers interview with Teresa Ryan

Teresa Ryan: How Trees Communicate | Bioneers 2017 Keynote

Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature

Earthlings: Intelligence in Nature | Bioneers Newsletter

Nature’s Genius is a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. For all the talk about the Age of Information, what we’re really entering is the Age of Nature. As we face the reality that, as humans, we have the capacity to destroy the conditions conducive to life, avoiding this fate requires a radical change in our relationship to nature, and how we view it. Looking to nature to heal nature, and ourselves, is essential. 

Traditional Indigenous wisdom and modern science show us that everything is connected and that the solutions we need are present in the sentient symphony of life. We can learn from the time-tested principles, processes, and dynamics that have allowed living systems to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution. 

In this enlightening series, we visit with scientists, ecologists, Indigenous practitioners of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, community organizers, and authors reporting from the frontlines of ecological restoration. They explore the intelligence inherent in nature and show us how to model human organization on living systems.

Guests featured in the series include: Jeannette Armstrong - Co-Founder, Enwokin Centre; Brock Dolman - Co-Founder and Program Director, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center; Erica Gies - Author and Journalist; Brett KenCairn - Founding Director of Center for Regenerative Solutions; Toby Kiers - Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Co-Founder of SPUN; Kate Lundquist - Water Institute Co-Director, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center; Samira Malone - Urban Forestry Program Manager, Urban Sustainability Directors Network; Teresa Ryan - Teaching and Learning Fellow, Forest and Conservation Sciences Dept., Univ. of British Columbia; Merlin Sheldrake - Biologist and Author; Suzanne Simard - Author and Prof. of Forest Ecology, Univ. of British Columbia; Rowen White - Seedkeeper/Farmer and Author from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne

Imagine an underground web of mind-boggling complexity, a bustling cosmopolis beneath your feet. Quadrillions of miles of tiny threads in the soil pulsate with real-time messages, trade vital nutrients, and form life-giving symbiotic partnerships. This is the mysterious realm of fungi. Acclaimed visionary biologists Toby Kiers and Merlin Sheldrake guide us through the intricate wonders of the mycorrhizal fungal networks that make life on Earth possible.

This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.

Toby Kiers, Ph.D., is the Executive Director and Chief Scientist of SPUN (the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) and a Professor of Evolutionary Biology at VU, Amsterdam.

Merlin Sheldrake, Ph.D., is a biologist and writer with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science. He is currently a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, works with the SPUN, and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation.

Merlin Sheldrake – How Fungi Make our Worlds | Bioneers 2024 Keynote

Merlin Sheldrake and Toby Kiers – Mapping, Protecting and Harnessing the Mycorrhizal Networks that Sustain Life on Earth | Bioneers 2024 Panel Discussion

Interview with Merlin Sheldrake, Author of Entangled Life

Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature

Earthlings: Intelligence in Nature | Bioneers Newsletter

SPUN (the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks)

Fungi Foundation

Water makes life possible. From the tiniest bacteria to the tallest tree, every living thing relies on this irreplaceable substance. Erica Gies, author of “Water Always Wins,” explores water’s unique role in the web of life, and how we might repair and reshape our relationship with it. Rather than telling water what to do, maybe we should start by asking what it wants?

This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.

Erica Gies is an independent journalist, National Geographic Explorer, and the author of “Water Always Wins: Thriving in an age of drought and deluge.” She covers water, climate change, plants and wildlife for Scientific American, The New York Times, bioGraphic, Nature, and other publications.

Erica Gies – The Slow Water Movement: How to Thrive in an Age of Drought and Deluge | Bioneers 2024 Keynote

Embracing Slow Water: Rediscovering the True Nature of Earth’s Lifeline | Excerpt from “Water Always Wins”

Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature

Earthlings: Intelligence in Nature | Bioneers Newsletter

Dr. Shane Gero, a visionary marine biologist, is angling to crack the code of sperm whale communication. His mind-bending research is transforming what we thought we knew about these ancient leviathans. It’s calling on us to embrace the reality that perhaps we’ve long suspected: Sperm whales are living meaningful, intelligent and complex lives whose cultures suggest that whales are people too. What can whale culture teach us, and can deep listening help us learn to coexist respectfully in kinship with these guardians of the deep?

Shane Gero, Ph.D., is a Canadian whale biologist, Scientist-in-Residence at Ottawa’s Carleton University, and a National Geographic Explorer. He is the founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project and the Biology Lead for Project CETI. His science appears in numerous magazines, books, and television; and most recently was the basis for the Emmy Award winning series, Secrets of the Whales. Learn more at shanegero.com.

Shane Gero – Preserving Animal Cultures: Lessons from Whale Wisdom | Bioneers 2023 Keynote

Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the podcast homepage to learn more.

The influences of Africans and Black Americans on food and agriculture is rooted in ancestral African knowledge and traditions of shared labor, worker co-ops 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.

Karen 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. 

The Farmer and the Chef: A Conversation Between Two Black Food Justice Activists

Karen Washington – 911 Our Food System Is Not Working

Working Against Racism in the Food System

Black Food: An Interview with Chef Bryant Terry

The Food Web Newsletter

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

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.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant shares her personal odyssey as a wildlife ecologist, conservation biologist and co-host of the famed TV nature show “Wild Kingdom.” As a scientist dedicated to protecting and conserving the diversity of the web of life, she reminds us that, as human beings, we are part of nature. It’s all connected, and it’s high time to bring about peaceful coexistence, not only with nature, but with one another.

Rae Wynn-Grant, Ph.D., is a wildlife ecologist and conservation biologist, creator of the award-winning podcast “Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant,” co-host of Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom,” and author of “Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World.”

Rae Wynn-Grant – Wild Life: How Personal Journeys are Essential to Sustainable Leadership in Environmental Science | Bioneers 2024 Keynote

Rae Wynn-Grant – Becoming a Wildlife Ecologist in a Rugged World | Excerpt from “Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World”

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.Saving Nature Means Saving Ourselves | Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant