Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

National Poet Laureate and musician Joy Harjo shares her artistic journey as a Native American woman into what she calls the “story field.” She says that in these times of radical disruption, chaos and disturbance, great creativity also pours forth… and we all play a part in which way the story will go.

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal, Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and was recently honored with a National Humanities Medal. 

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Kenny Ausubel

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Associate Producer: Emily Harris

Producer: Teo Grossman

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Production Assistance: Mika Anami

This program features music by Joy Harjo and from Nagamo Publishing, the Indigenous-created music library.

Watch Joy Harjo's Keynote – Bioneers 2025

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

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.⁠

Featuring

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.

Resources

⁠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

Credits

The late visionary primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall revolutionized primatology and helped us realize how close our kinship is with the animal kin-dom. Dr. Jane, as she’s affectionately known, began her intensive solitary studies of chimp behavior in Africa’s Gombe National Forest. She inspired the world to save the rapidly dwindling populations and their habitats. Her compelling vision lives on to inspire hope.

Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history. It represented a literal watershed moment; unprecedented co-equal decision-making between the tribes and their historical nemesis – the US government.

Once complete in 2024, the project will liberate the Klamath river and several tributaries to once again run free across 400-miles from Oregon through California and into the Pacific Ocean.

Featuring

Sammy Gensaw (Yurok) is the Founding Director of the Ancestral Guard, Artist, Yurok Language Speaker, Singer, Writer, Cultural/Political/Environmental Activist, Regalia Maker, Mediator, Youth Leader & Fisherman.

Craig Tucker has 20+ years of advocacy and activism experience, especially working with tribal members, fishermen and farmers in the Klamath Basin on dam removal, traditional fire management, gold mining, and water policy, and is the founder and Principal of Suits and Signs Consulting.

Indigenous Forum – Undam the Klamath! How Tribes Led the Largest River Restoration Project in US History | Bioneers 2023

The river that came back to life: a journey down the reborn Klamath | The Guardian

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. In this program, acclaimed visionary biologists Toby Kiers and Merlin Sheldrake will 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.

Featuring

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.

Credits:

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel

Produced by: Cathy Edwards

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Producer: Teo Grossman

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

In this moment of radical transformation, shifting the societal pronoun from “me, me, me” to “we” may be the single most transformational pivot we can make in order for anything else to work. Our destiny is ultimately collective.

How can we overcome corrosive divisions and separations that are tearing us apart and create a world where everyone belongs?

In this program, we dip into a deep conversation on this topic between Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell, two long-time friends and leaders in a quest toward building a multicultural democracy.

Featuring

Angela Glover Blackwell is Founder-in-Residence at ⁠PolicyLink⁠, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity. One of the nation’s most prominent, award-winning social justice advocates, she serves on numerous boards and advisory councils, including the inaugural Community Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and California’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery.

john a. powell is the Director of the ⁠Othering and Belonging Institute⁠ and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. A former National Legal Director of the ACLU, he co-founded the ⁠Poverty & Race Research Action Council⁠ and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. His latest book is: ⁠Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society⁠.

Resources

⁠From Othering to Belonging | Bioneers 2022 Panel Discussion with Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell⁠

⁠Angela Glover Blackwell – Transformative Solidarity for a Thriving Multiracial Democracy | Bioneers 2022 Keynote Address⁠

⁠john a. powell – Healing Across Divides: Building Bridges to Challenge Systemic Injustice | Bioneers 2020 Keynote Address⁠

Credits

This 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.

The theme music is co-written by the Baka Forest People of Cameroon and Baka Beyond, from the album East to West. Find out more at ⁠globalmusicexchange.org⁠.

Additional music was made available by:

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

In this episode, award-winning lawyer and climate justice organizer Colette Pichon Battle lays out a bold vision for a new organizing project designed to model bioregional democratic climate action. The aim is to transform the Gulf South and Appalachia away from the lethal matrix of fossil fuel extraction and extractive economics. Instead, the regional vision is for a regenerative future of clean energy democracy, and an equitable, inclusive economy.

Featuring

Colette Pichon Battle, a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, is an award-winning lawyer and prominent climate justice organizer. After 17 years leading the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, she co-founded Taproot Earth to create connections and power across issues, movements, and geographies.

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Kenny Ausubel

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Producer: Teo Grossman

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Songs in this Episode: ‘Good Morning New Orleans’ by Kermit Ruffins; ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’ by Rebirth Brass Band, provided by Basin Street Records in New Orleans, Louisiana

Colette Pichon Battle – Expanding Our Movements for Climate Justice | Bioneers 2024 Keynote

“Let’s Get Behind the Frontlines” with Colette Pichon Battle | Audio Excerpt

From Climate Crisis to Climate Justice | Bioneers Newsletter

Taproot Earth

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

Author, broadcaster and scholar Thom Hartmann warns of the existential threat of a virulent new oligarchy: the third frontal assault by the ultra-wealthy in American history to use their concentrated economic power to seize maximum political power - and overthrow democracy once and for all.

Featuring

Thom Hartmann, a best-selling author of over 30 books in print and host of the #1 progressive talk show host in America for more than a decade, has co-written and been featured in 6 documentaries with Leonardo DiCaprio about climate change. 

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Kenny Ausubel

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Associate Producer: Emily Harris

Producer: Teo Grossman

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Resources

Thom Hartmann – Supreme Oligarchy at the Gates | Bioneers 2025 Keynote

Thom Hartmann – All Life Is Organized Around Democracy | Bioneers 2020 Keynote

Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime | Bioneers Podcast

Kenny Ausubel – Hostile Takeover | Bioneers 2025 Keynote

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

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. From the historic Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969 to the fossil fuel fights throughout Canada and the U.S. today, Indigenous resistance illuminates an activism founded in a spiritual connection with the web of life and the human community – with Julian Brave NoiseCat, Dr. LaNada War Jack and Clayton Thomas-Müller.

Featuring

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