Bioneer, As we stand on the brink of a new year, we're deeply appreciative of the support from our vibrant community. We're grateful for all of you: innovators, leaders, engaged activists and practical dreamers who fuel our mission. Your support serves as the bedrock upon which we continue to build, empowering us to highlight and amplify impactful projects and narratives. In this newsletter, we're excited to spotlight some of the compelling stories and groundbreaking projects that resonated with our community in 2023. Looking forward, we invite you to play an active role in shaping our collective path. We hope you’ll consider continuing your support or becoming a new supporter of Bioneers at whatever level is comfortable for you. We’re eagerly anticipating another year filled with inspiration and action, and we're excited to have you alongside us on this journey. |
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Top Bioneers Articles of 2023 |
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Until fairly recently, the dominant view among scientists was that non-human animals didn’t manifest real intelligence and certainly didn’t live in dynamic cultures. But those ideas have been entirely demolished in recent years. Several examples of sophisticated decision-making, tool usage, emotional richness, and complex social organization in species have come to light. In this edited conversation led by journalist Kate Golden, we hear from two major figures in this burgeoning scientific and societal renaissance, Carl Safina and Shane Gero, about what we know and what we might be able to learn from studying sperm whales. |
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| Architect Katrina Spade invented human composting after learning about the “mortality composting” practices used on some farms. She has worked tirelessly to bring the process to the world, first getting a human composting bill passed in Washington state, then founding Recompose, a Public Benefit Corporation based in Seattle and the world’s first human composting company. Recompose started accepting bodies for human composting in December 2020. |
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“We’re in a dark place as a global civilization. But the beavers are an amazing ray of light in some ways. They are one of history’s great conservation success stories.” - Ben Goldfarb In an interview with Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, we explore the historical extent of beavers in North America and the dramatic transformation of the entire landscape as a result of the truly barbaric fur trade that led to colonization of the interior of the continent and the near extinction of the species. |
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Register for Bioneers 2024Registration for Bioneers 2024 is now open! Our 35th-anniversary conference promises an opportunity to share what we’ve learned, link arms, nourish our hearts and vision, and align ourselves to prevail for the long haul. We invite you to connect with the Bioneers community of leadership in this time when we’re all called upon to be leaders. The best way to predict the future is to create it. See you at Berkeley Bioneers 2024! |
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Top Podcast Episodes of 2023 |
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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 podcast episode, 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. |
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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. |
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Have you ever asked yourself why someone would invent a way to keep food fresh that would one day litter large swaths of the landscape and release toxic substances after its short disposable life? Master green chemists and educators John Warner and Amy Cannon say all that is changing — by necessity and by design. The radical growth of green chemistry is showing we can have good chemistry with the Earth by emulating nature's green chemistry and still thrive and prosper. |
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| As one of our most clear-eyed explorers of such topics as plant intelligence and how we feed ourselves, Michael Pollan shares his luminous insights from what began as an investigative reportage of psychedelics. This research became a very personal journey into the mystery of consciousness and the nature of spirituality at a time when only a shift in human consciousness can alter the trajectory of our societies. |
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| The duet OLOX, which combines Zarina Kopyrina’s ancient, traditional Siberian shamanic music with modern sounds, has performed around the world, from Burning Man to the Kremlin to Iceland to the Arctic. Zarina is passionately engaged with activism and advocacy for the rights and lands of far northern Indigenous peoples. |
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| In this video, Dallas Goldtooth of the Native American comedy troupe The 1491s uses humor to subvert the narrative of what it means to be a native person in the world right now. The 1491s is an intertribal group of comedians who regularly satirize and parody many aspects of Indian life. |
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Bioneers Projects of 2023 |
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"I realized that it doesn’t take a bunch of people to make a change, it can just be a little group that can make a difference.” The Bioneers Indigeneity Program hosted a historic Rights of Nature gathering in Southern California. With over 230 participants representing 79 Tribes, participants were taken through a series of activities designed to support them in identifying the links between Tribal activism, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Rights of Nature. |
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| The world around us is alive. It’s smart too. Bioneers is pleased to present Earthlings, a biweekly newsletter exploring the extraordinary intelligence of life inherent in animals, plants, and fungi. In each issue, we delve into captivating stories and research that promise to reshape your perception of your fellow Earthlings – and point toward a profound shift in how we all might inhabit this planet together. |
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| Looking to the past, the present and the future, the “Dreaming Out Loud” mini-series engages with pivotal moments and transformative figures in Black culture. Against the backdrop of a country that does not offer certain folks humanizing love, these stories traverse the beauty of Black minds as they dare to dream out loud and resist domination for a future of radical possibility. |
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At Bioneers 2023, we were welcomed with open arms to a new location by thousands of new friends. We heard from extraordinary leaders who are – as Kim Stanley Robinson says – doing real work.Enjoy and share this collection of media from the 2023 Bioneers Conference, including videos of keynote presentations, performances, and more. |
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Support the Bioneers Movement of MovementsWhen you support Bioneers, you’re supporting an entire community of diverse leadership striving for breakthrough solutions to the great challenges facing humanity. |
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