Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

How does a virtue become a vice? How does a basic building block of life turn into a threat to life? And how do you turn that vice back into a virtue? In this half-hour we visit with two unlikely pathfinders who are helping to revolutionize farming. Calla Rose Ostrander and John Wick of the Marin Carbon Project are taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it back where it belongs: in the soil. In so doing, they’re also revitalizing the soil, conserving water, and building agricultural resilience. Scaling up these revolutionary regenerative methods can offset the climate destabilization, which that threatens to confound agriculture and endanger our food supply. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the ⁠radio and 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. 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 Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel and Arty Mangan Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Production Assistance: Monica Lopez Additional music: ⁠Ketsa⁠ 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.

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.

Erosion and evolution. Shadow and light. Death and rebirth. These are some of the strands that the acclaimed author, naturalist and activist Terry Tempest Williams weaves together in the face of today’s broken world. Standing in the lineage of the greatest nature writers, she links her deepest inner experiences with the state of the web of life. In this program, Williams asks: How do we find the strength to not look away at all that is breaking our hearts? Hands on the earth, we remember where the source of our authentic power comes from. We have to go deeper. She also explores histories of privilege, religion, and identity in Utah, and how reconciling her experiences with these cultural strands have helped unleash and shape her voice as a storyteller who translates the voice of nature and speaks for justice. 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. 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 Music was made available by: Jami Sieber at ⁠JamiSieber.com⁠ Gigi Masin at ⁠MusicFromMemory.com⁠ APM This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the ⁠radio and podcast homepage⁠ to learn more.

After accomplished stints as a journalist, author and diplomat, and studying theology at Yale Divinity School, Krista Tippett was struck by a significant gap in the media landscape—a lack of deep, intelligent conversations to explore the spiritual, ethical and moral aspects of human life. What began as a national public radio show in 2003 evolved into the multiple award-winning podcast “⁠On Being⁠” (“wisdom to replenish and orient in a tender, tumultuous time to be alive.”) Gifted with insatiable curiosity, profound relational intelligence, a poetic sensibility, and an ability to unearth revelatory ideas to live by, Krista creates spaces where wisdom can emerge. With her interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral whole systems overview, she’s hosted luminaries as disparate as Mary Oliver, Thich Nhat Hahn, Isabel Wilkerson and Desmond Tutu, among many more. Listen to this rare intimate, live interview with her friend, insightful strategist, philanthropist and activist Azita Ardakani. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the ⁠radio and podcast homepage⁠ to learn more.