Gil Friend, former Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, relates some of the strategies and problems involved in helping urban communities gain self control and emphasizes the importance of diverse, place-based action in addressing the formidable challenges we face. (Episode photo courtesy of natlogic.com)

Alice Tepper Marlin, President Emerita of Social Accountability International and founder of the Council on Economic Priorities, presents the methodologies and strategies she used to show big business that community interests don’t necessarily threaten corporate profitability. (Episode photo courtesy of rightlivelihoodaward.org)

David Ehrenfeld, the author of The Arrogance of Humanism, considers the teaching of stewardship implicit in Judaism. Since Jewish Law originally dictated to generations of a land-based community, he explains, it provided a forceful and specific ecological wisdom and ethic of land management from which we might gain insight at present.

Farmer/poet/essayist Wendell Berry analogizes marriage and agriculture and traces the effects of ‘divisions branching out from the division between body and soul’ in the household and in the farm community where he lives. Berry is the author of The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture; Farming: A Handbook; and A Continuous Harmony. (Episode photo courtesy of theecologist.org)

Iranian Islamic philosopher and polymath, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, offers a spiritual and historical account of the ecological crisis and emphasizes the need to rediscover the Sacred. Nasr is a Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University and author of The Garden of Truth; The Encounter Between Man and Nature; and Science and Civilization in Islam. (Episode photo courtesy of George Washington University)

Indigenous rights activist Janet McCloud describes the struggle of her people to re-establish their traditional ways of harmony and balance and recounts anecdotes of non-Indigenous activists being both exploitative and supportive in their efforts to promote justice. (Episode photo courtesy of University of Washington Libraries)

Francisco Varela, a biologist at the National University of Chile and author of Autopoiesis and Cognition and The Embodied Mind, relates his personal experience during the 1973 Chilean coup d'état to his personal conviction that ‘epistemology does matter.' Amidst the chaos of the coup, Varela experiences a moment of clarity and begins to understands the 'logic of paradise.' (Episode photo courtesy of goodreads.com)

Quaker sociologist and renowned peace scholar, Elise Boulding, provides a historical perspective on women in community and gives her appraisal of the future success of new communities. Boulding is the author of The Underside of History and Cultures of Peace. (Episode photo courtesy of vanierinstitute.ca.)

Farmer, scientist, and ecological designer, John Todd, relates the experiences which formed the New Alchemy Institute and describes some projects in intensive aquaculture and agriculture using wind and solar energy. Todd recounts the rediscovery of a sense of place that emerges from the fabrication of these self-sufficient bioshelters.

Astronaut Russell "Rusty" Schweickart describes his experience during a camera malfunction in space. While his friend repairs the camera, Schweickart is able to take an unscheduled moment to gaze at the whole Earth from above. The result is a profound change in consciousness, an identification with the entire planet and an embodied feeling of global unity.