Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

When members of Project CETI (the Cetacean Translation Initiative) witnessed the birth of a sperm whale, they observed a breathtaking scene of cooperation and communication that few humans on earth have ever seen. The extraordinary experience was both a scientific milestone as well as one more strand in the web of sperm whale culture that this innovative project is studying. The Project CETI team leverages world-leading technology and science in a quest to understand nonhuman animal communication. At the same time, the scientists leading the project are keeping an ethical throughline, placing the health and well being of whales at the center of the effort. As we get tantalizingly closer to truly communicating with other species, the question becomes not only whether we can, but whether we should - and what the implications are if we do. 

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.

Featuring

David Gruber is the Founder & President of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), a nonprofit, interdisciplinary scientific and conservation initiative on a mission to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales. He is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at the City University of New York, Baruch College & The CUNY Graduate Center.

Resources

Project CETI

DavidGruber.com

Earthlings Newsletter: Intelligence in Nature

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel

Producer: Cathy Edwards

Producer: Teo Grossman

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Associate Producer: Emily Harris

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Production Assistance: Mika Anami

Interview Recording Engineers: Rod Akil at KPFA and Bill Siegmund, Digital Island Studios, LLC

Mother Nature is the ultimate designer. After all, since life first emerged on Earth, she’s had 3.8 billion years of evolutionary R&D to get it right. Biomimicry is the art and science of learning from this ineffable genius: tapping into the patterns of nature to live harmoniously with life’s principles.

We meet Janine Benyus, known as the “godmother of modern biomimicry”.

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.

Yurok Attorney Amy Cordalis is one of many Indigenous leaders who have fought for the un-damming and healing of the majestic Klamath River Basin, spanning Oregon and California. She tells the story of the decades-long struggle to remove dams that have choked the life flow of the river and severed salmon migratory routes, and how a combination of traditional ecological knowledge, environmental law, and old-fashioned diplomacy helped remove 4 of 6 dams and ushered in a $515 million settlement agreement to restore the river and riparian lands.

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.

Featuring

Amy Cordalis (Yurok Tribe member whose ceremony family is from Rek-woi at the mouth of the Klamath River), a devoted advocate for Indigenous rights and environmental restoration as well as a fisherwoman, attorney, and mother deeply rooted in the traditions of her people, is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group and leads efforts to support tribes in protecting their sovereignty, lands, and waters, including the historic Klamath Dam Removal project.

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel

Producer: Cathy Edwards

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Producer: Teo Grossman

Associate Producer: Emily Harris

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Production Assistance: Mika Anami

Visionary agricultural innovator Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin unearths a startling natural-world template for building a global movement that puts the chicken at the heart of bioregional food systems. These Poultry-Centered Regenerative Agroforestry farms can both renew the land and ultimately support the hundreds of millions of small farmers who produce 70% of the world’s food.

Scientific evidence is increasingly supporting the theory that the Earth is alive and replete with intelligence. In fact, the wild diversity of earthly organisms exhibits the characteristics that human beings attribute to personhood. How is it then, by the law, that a corporation is a person, but nature is not? What if we expand the anthropocentric boundaries of our systems of laws, rights and responsibilities to encompass ALL living beings? How would this new legal story affect our relationship with our vast other-than-human Earth family? In this episode, we imagine a planet with rights for all, with visionary lawyer César Rodríguez-Garavito.

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.

César Rodríguez-Garavito, a Professor of Clinical Law, Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and founding Director of the More Than Human Life (MOTH) Program and the Earth Rights Advocacy Program (all based at NYU School of Law), is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work and publications focus on climate change, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the human rights movement.

Resources

More-Than-Human-Life (MOTH)

Report Assessing the Implementation of the Los Cedros Ruling in Ecuador | MOTH

César Rodríguez-Garavito – More-Than-Human Rights: Pushing the Boundaries of Legal Imagination to Re-Animate the World | Bioneers 2025 Keynote

Deep Dive: Intelligence in Nature

Earthlings: Intelligence in Nature | Bioneers Newsletter

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel

Producer: Cathy Edwards

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Producer: Teo Grossman

Associate Producer: Emily Harris

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Production Assistance: Mika Anami

Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

Plants make up over 80% of life on earth. No animal would exist without plants’ ultimate magic trick of turning sunlight into food. Today, scientists are unearthing a wild, weird world of vegetal genius. But how can we truly understand beings so radically different from ourselves? We consider the emerging science of plants from the vantage points of philosophy and ethics, with Harvard scholar Rachael Petersen.

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.

Featuring

⁠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. 

Credits

Resources

⁠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.

We are told that our personal health is our individual responsibility based on our own choices. Yet, the biological truth is that human health is dependent upon the health of nature’s ecosystems and our social structures. Decisions that negatively affect these larger systems and eventually affect us are made without our consent as citizens and, often, without our knowledge. Dr. Rupa Marya, former Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco, and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition, says “social medicine” means dismantling harmful social structures that directly lead to poor health outcomes, and building new structures that promote health and healing.

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

With climate-driven disasters becoming the new normal, building resilience is the grail. Communities around the world are developing models created out of practical necessity. We hear on-the-ground stories from two different communities building resilience in the wake of serial disasters. Estrella Santiago Perez and her innovative community rights organization ENLACE have helped organize a collection of marginalized neighborhoods in San Juan, Puerto Rico to overcome the twin catastrophes of Hurricane Maria and a failed government. And far away in the fire-ravaged communities near California’s relatively well-off wine country, Trathen Heckman helped lead the nonprofit grassroots group Daily Acts to build a resilience network from the ground up with engaged citizens action, civil society groups and Sonoma County government agencies.

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

After World War II, the U.S. government worked with industry to create a single-use, disposable consumer culture as a way to ensure ongoing market prosperity.  Who benefited? Consumer product companies like Coca-Cola, and the fossil fuel industry, whose petrochemicals are at the source. The result? Plastic pollution is now found in virtually every living organism – including humans – and is one of the worst threats to ocean ecosystems. Now, a global resistance movement is rising to abolish petrochemical plastics and to shift to a zero-waste, circular economy.

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Monica Lopez and Kenny Ausubel

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Producer: Teo Grossman

Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Production Assistance: Claire Reynolds

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