Podcasts about Bioneers

Visionary clean energy entrepreneur Danny Kennedy explores the promise and challenges of the epic civilizational transition to renewable energy. Without doubt, the shift has hit the fan, but will we make the transition in time to avert complete climate breakdown? Danny Kennedy says we can – and the real heroes will be millions of clean energy entrepreneurs and startups, in partnership with the determined leadership of Indigenous Peoples arising worldwide. Featuring Danny Kennedy, with a long background in eco activism, has become one of the nation's leading figures in clean-technology entrepreneurship and the capitalization of the transition to a “green” economy. Kennedy is currently CEO of New Energy Nexus, a global nonprofit providing funds, accelerators, and networks to drive clean energy innovation and adoption. Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Resources Danny Kennedy – The Charging 20s | Bioneers 2023 Keynote Danny Kennedy – Optimizing the Energy Transition | Bioneers 2016 Keynote 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 sharing an episode from our friends at Future Ecologies. Future Ecologies is a podcast exploring our eco-social relationships through stories, science, music, and soundscapes. Every episode is an invitation to see the world in a new light — weaving together narrative and interviews with expert knowledge holders. We will be back next week with an episode of the Bioneers. Here is more about the episode we are featuring: Food security, climate adaptation, and vibrant biodiversity all in one place — welcome to the ancient and diverse technologies of Sea Gardening.   These widespread (but often overlooked) monumental rock features are proof positive of thriving Indigenous maricultural systems all around the Pacific Rim, since time immemorial.   These spaces are not only simply stunningly beautiful spots to hang out, they're also a powerful symbol of eco-cultural restoration; of Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and internationalism; of relationship building; and of the kind of future that is possible as we adapt to a changing climate and rising sea levels. We hope you find them as inspiring as we do.   Join us as we visit a sea garden, learn about how they work, and meet a few of the people bringing them back to life.   Visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-2-sea-garden for full credits, links, citations, photos, a transcript, and more.

Send us a textThe climate crisis represents humanity's greatest challenge—but how can professional coaches contribute to solutions? In this revealing conversation, we explore the groundbreaking work of the Climate Coaching Alliance (CCA), a volunteer-driven global movement transforming how coaches approach environmental consciousness.Joining us are Alison Maitland, leadership and inclusion coach focused on helping leaders address society's biggest challenges, and Eve Turner, one of the CCA's co-founders. Together, they share the remarkable story of how a small group of committed coaches launched a movement that now spans continents, languages, and coaching specialties.The discussion tackles a fundamental question many coaches struggle with: how do we ethically incorporate climate awareness without imposing our agenda on clients? As Eve explains, "We're not just coaches—we're human beings," and this work requires us to examine our role in either maintaining or transforming existing systems. Alison adds powerful perspective on working with climate-related emotions: "The deeper the emotions, the more evidence that people care, how much they love the earth."You'll discover practical approaches for bringing climate consciousness into your coaching practice, from chemistry sessions to values discussions. Learn about the wealth of resources available through the CCA, including communities in multiple languages, special interest groups, and their comprehensive guidebook filled with exercises, questions, and stories from coaches worldwide.Perhaps most compelling is the connection between planetary transformation and personal transformation. Climate coaching isn't just about external challenges—it involves deep inner work. As coaches develop their capacity to hold space for difficult emotions like grief and anxiety, they simultaneously help clients navigate our changing world with resilience and purpose.Whether you're already engaged in climate work or just beginning to explore its relevance to coaching, this conversation offers valuable insights, practical resources, and an open invitation to join a supportive community making a meaningful difference.Watch the full interview by clicking here.Find the full article here.Learn more about Alison here.Learn more about Eve here.You can join the Climate Coaching Alliance.You can purchase the book Ecological and Climate here and use this 20% coupon code 25AFLY1.There are 13 professional coaching, supervision, mentoring and coaching psychology bodies and communities who have signed up the joint statement on the ecological and climate crisis, they can find out more here.Here is a link to an amazing short poem by American poet and climate activist, Drew Dellinger, sent to music and words by Bioneers.  Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com

Episode OverviewIn this episode of Spiral Deeper, our host, Gaby Azorsky, speaks with Isis Indriya. As a Minister, Culture Creator, Bridgebuilder, and fireplace keeper for the Oracle Clan, an educator of Ritual, Divination, Egyptian Cosmology, and Hermeticism, Isis shares what she has learned along the way all over the world, online, on Ritual Community, and through the school she birthed; Academy of Oracle Arts. She also leads pilgrimages to Egypt and in her Temple hosts community prayers and gatherings. She is on the board for Water Now, Church of the Essence, Living Village Culture, the Oracle Clan and is an advocate for The Fountain.earth, Bioneers, Unify, and the Compass @ Lightning in a Bottle. With over 20 years experience in various forms of gatherings, ranging from one-on-one sessions to facilitation of rituals of over 30k people with Wisdomkeepers from around the world, Isis dedicates her life to learning and creating platforms for teaching of the sacred sciences of the Ancients, Indigenous wisdom, cultural exchange, Nature's intelligence, and inner transformation as pathways for moving forward. Together, they dive into the invisible and unseen, mysteries, pilgrimage, the great unknown, communing with the sacred, temple space and sacred space, ritual, adornment, and touching the wisdom mystery teachings of ancient Egypt / Kemet. Thank you for joining us on this journey of self-discovery, sacredness, and learning!To celebrate the growth and magic of Spiral Deeper (and the launch of Season 3!), I am hosting a giveaway with some of my favorite brands. This is the last week to enter! The winner will receive: 1 planner from In Flow, 1 Anxiety Support bundle with Reishi and Lion's Mane from Rainbo Mushrooms, 3 triangle soaps from Wild Lather, 1 copy of the vintage collectors book Country Women with a little prayer bell from the small shop, The Bell up in Mendocino, 1 beaded healing mat for your altar made by Elle McDaniels, and 1 Ritual Rainforest Serum by Earth Archive. To enter: subscribe to the podcast, leave a written review on Apple Podcasts, and share Spiral Deeper on Instagram by tagging Gaby (@gaby.azorsky) and @spiral.deeper in your IG Stories.Special OfferCODE - SPIRALOFFLOWERS for 20% off your first month in The Flower Portal!Connect and Work with GabyInspiring the connection between Heaven and Earth through Reiki, Tarot, Folk herbalism, Clairvoyance, and Meditation. Together, we co-create harmony, clarity, and alignment with your True Essence. I'd love to support you!Visit my website to learn more: gabyazorsky.comFollow me on Instagram: @gaby.azorskyNewsletter: Sign Up HereBook a 1:1 Session: Book HereJoin My Membership, The Flower Portal: Learn MoreWith Spiral DeeperWebsite - Spiral Deeper PodcastInstagram - @spiral.deeperWith Our Guest, Isis IndriyaWebsite - https://www.academyoforaclearts.com/instructors/isis-indriya/Instagram - @isis_indriyaCreditsSpecial thanks to…Music - Connor HayesSpiral Deeper Icon - Kami MarchandCollaborate with UsInterested in advertising or collaborating with Spiral Deeper? Email gabyazorsky@gmail.com for packages and details.Support the ShowPlease rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen - it means so much. Be sure to tag @spiral.deeper if you share; thank you for your support!

  Replay, from Fall 2008 – but so powerfully pertinent to now… Janine will be speaking at Bioneers (and will be re-joining us as a radio guest in the weeks to come!).   “Biomimicry,” as sine qua non for life on planet… that humans humbly cooperate with Nature's guiding design Genius Again we are drawn to replay this most fantabulous show from the archives with Janine Benyus. Benyus describes herself as “Scientist, animist, poet,” founder of Biomimicry Institute. “Let's learn democracy from bees! Before our arrogance destroys the bees, who truly know how to vote.” “Range voting.” Grief and ingenuity… innovation & limits   biomimicry.net/bios/janine-benyus     *Woof*Woof*Wanna*Play?!?* · www.CoyoteNetworkNews.com · The Visionary Activist Show on Patreon The post The Visionary Activist Show – Biomimicry (replay) appeared first on KPFA.

Today, it's our pleasure to bring you an episode from our friends at Bioneers, who have just released a 6-part series called Nature's Genius.Follow Bioneers wherever you get podcasts, or listen to the rest of the series at bioneers.org/natures-genius/This is episode 1 — The Universe Beneath Our Feet: Mapping the Mycelial Web of LifeImagine 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. Acclaimed visionary biologists Toby Kiers and Merlin Sheldrake guide us through the intricate wonders of the mycorrhizal fungal networks that make life on Earth possible.

On this show, in honor of the upcoming Bioneers Conference in Berkeley at the end of the month, we focus on the enduring legacy of 94-year old elder Oren Lyons, Onondaga Chief and a beacon of Indigenous culture and environmental activism. We explore Oren's insights from the 2024 Bioneers conference, his reflections on the Haudenosaunee principles of peace, and his impassioned plea for a value shift towards communal living and environmental harmony. His keynote address was entitled To Survive, We Must Transform our Values. Discover the unwritten history of Turtle Island and the wisdom that could lead humanity to a more just and sustainable world. Bioneers [https://bioneers.org/] is a nonprofit organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. Founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by social entrepreneurs Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, they act as a hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges. For an extended interview and other benefits, become an EcoJustice Radio patron at https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio More Info: Bioneers Conference https://conference.bioneers.org/ Oren Lyons, “We Are Part of the Earth” Sacred Lands Film Project: https://youtu.be/bSwmqZ272As?si=crGAyku6eCrFwbaC Oren Lyons on The Wizard of Oz, Sacred Lands Film Project: https://youtu.be/t8ttzSwYFa8?si=43nbAQNXGPcz1ZuI More on Oren Lyons: https://wilderutopia.com/international/earth/oren-lyons-on-the-unity-of-the-earth/ Oren Lyons, a Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan who serves as a Member Chief of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs and the Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy (also known as the Haudenosaunee peoples), is an accomplished artist, social and environmental activist, and author; a Professor Emeritus at SUNY Buffalo; a leading voice at the UN Permanent Forum on Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples; and the recipient of many prestigious national and international prizes including The UN NGO World Peace Prize. Casey Camp-Horinek, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, is a longtime activist, environmentalist, actress, and author. Her work has led to the Ponca Nation being the first tribe in Oklahoma to adopt a Rights of Nature statute and to pass a moratorium on fracking on its territory. Casey, who was instrumental in the drafting of the first International Indigenous Women's Treaty protecting the Rights of Nature, works with Indigenous and other leaders and organizations globally and sits on the boards of WECAN, Movement Rights, and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Jack Eidt is an urban planner, environmental journalist, and climate organizer, as well as award-winning fiction writer. He is Co-Founder of SoCal 350 Climate Action and Executive Producer of EcoJustice Radio. He is also Founder and Publisher of WilderUtopia [https://wilderutopia.com], a website dedicated to the question of Earth sustainability, finding society-level solutions to environmental, community, economic, transportation and energy needs. Podcast Website: http://ecojusticeradio.org/ Podcast Blog: https://www.wilderutopia.com/category/ecojustice-radio/ Support the Podcast: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Executive Producer and Host: Jack Eidt Engineer and Original Music: Blake Quake Beats Episode 218 Photo credit: Oren Lyons

Over 7,000 languages are spoken around the world. Each one reflects a rich ecosystem of ideas - seeds that grow into a multitude of worldviews. Today, many of these immeasurably precious knowledge systems are endangered - often spoken by just a handful of people. We hear from two Indigenous language champions, Jeannette Armstrong and Rowen White. They reflect on the words, stories, songs and ideas that influence our very conception of nature, and our place within it. 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 Jeannette Armstrong, Ph.D., (Okanagan) is an Indigenous author, teacher, ecologist, and a culture bearer for her Native language. She is also Co-founder of the En'owkin Centre. Rowen White (Mohawk) is a seed keeper and farmer, and part of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network. She operates a living seed bank called Sierra Seeds. Resources En'owkin Centre Indigenous Seed Keepers Network Sierra Seeds Language Keepers: The Struggle for Indigenous Language Survival in California Hand Talk, Native American Sign Language Native Seed Rematriation Credits Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by: Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel Produced by: Cathy Edwards Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch Associate Producer: Emily Harris Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineers: Kaleb Wentzel Fisher and Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

In this age of global weirding where climate disruption has tumbled the Goldilocks effect into unruly surges of too much and too little water, the restoration of beavers offers ancient nature-based solutions to the tangle of challenges bedeviling human civilization. Droughts, floods, soil erosion, climate change, biodiversity loss – you name it, and beaver is on it. In this episode, Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center share their semi-aquatic journey to becoming Beaver Believers. They are part of a passionate global movement to bring back our rodent relatives who show us how to heal nature by working with nature. 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 Kate Lundquist, co-director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center's WATER Institute and the Bring Back the Beaver Campaign in Sonoma County, is a conservationist, educator and ecological artist who works with landowners, communities and resource agencies to uncover obstacles, identify strategic solutions, and generate restoration recommendations to assure healthy watersheds, water security, listed species recovery and climate change resiliency. Brock Dolman, co-founded (in 1994) the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center where he co-directs the WATER Institute. A wildlife biologist and watershed ecologist, he has been actively promoting “Bringing Back Beaver in California” since the early 2000s. He was given the Salmonid Restoration Federation's coveted Golden Pipe Award in 2012: “…for his leading role as a proponent of “working with beavers” to restore native habitat. Resources Beaver Believer: How Massive Rodents Could Restore Landscapes and Ecosystems At Scale Fire and Water: Land and Watershed Management in the Age of Climate Change Brock Dolman – Basins of Relations: A Reverential Rehydration Revolution From Kingdom to Kin-dom: Acting As If We Have Relatives Brock Dolman, Paul Stamets and Brian Thomas Swimme The WATER Institute's Beaver in California reader Bioneers – Where Water, Flows Life Thrives - Ensuring Drought Resilience and Water Security for Farms, People and Ecosystems 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 Production Assistance: Monica Lopez Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

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 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 Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

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. Acclaimed visionary biologists Toby Kiers and Merlin Sheldrake 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 limited series. 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: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Producer: Teo Grossman Graphic Design: Megan Howe Resources 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

Nature's Genius is a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. For all the talk about the Age of Information, what we're really entering is the Age of Nature. As we face the reality that, as humans, we have the capacity to destroy the conditions conducive to life, avoiding this fate requires a radical change in our relationship to nature, and how we view it. Looking to nature to heal nature, and ourselves, is essential.  Traditional Indigenous wisdom and modern science show us that everything is connected and that the solutions we need are present in the sentient symphony of life. We can learn from the time-tested principles, processes, and dynamics that have allowed living systems to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution.  In this enlightening series, we visit with scientists, ecologists, Indigenous practitioners of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, community organizers, and authors reporting from the frontlines of ecological restoration. They explore the intelligence inherent in nature and show us how to model human organization on living systems. Guests featured in the series include: Jeannette Armstrong - Co-Founder, Enwokin Centre; Brock Dolman - Co-Founder and Program Director, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center; Erica Gies - Author and Journalist; Brett KenCairn - Founding Director of Center for Regenerative Solutions; Toby Kiers - Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Co-Founder of SPUN; Kate Lundquist - Water Institute Co-Director, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center; Samira Malone - Urban Forestry Program Manager, Urban Sustainability Directors Network; Teresa Ryan - Teaching and Learning Fellow, Forest and Conservation Sciences Dept., Univ. of British Columbia; Merlin Sheldrake - Biologist and Author; Suzanne Simard - Author and Prof. of Forest Ecology, Univ. of British Columbia; Rowen White - Seedkeeper/Farmer and Author from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Written by Cathy Edwards and Kenny Ausubel Produced by Cathy Edwards Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Post Production Assistants: Monica Lopez and Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher Graphic Designer: Megan Howe

Water makes life possible. From the tiniest bacteria to the tallest tree, every living thing relies on this irreplaceable substance. Erica Gies, author of “Water Always Wins,” explores water's unique role in the web of life, and how we might repair and reshape our relationship with it. Rather than telling water what to do, maybe we should start by asking what it wants? This is an episode of Nature's Genius, a Bioneers limited series. Visit the series page to learn more.

Society & Culture - Bioneers

Society & Culture - Bioneers

Send us a textClimate change is a real-world problem. Its intricate web connects governance, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Real solutions require moral leadership that reaches far beyond political party and country lines.In the latest episode of our series on Moral Leadership, Bishop Wright has a conversation with Dr. David Orr, an esteemed environmental scholar, on his journey from international relations to pioneering environmental activism. They discuss the systemic issues surrounding climate change and the ethical responsibilities we all share in safeguarding our planet. Listen in for the full conversation.Dr. David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College. and presently Professor of Practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward (Yale University Press, 2017), Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009), Design with Nature (Oxford, 2002), Earth in Mind (Island, 2004) and co-editor of four others including Democracy Unchained (The New Press, 2020). He was a regular columnist for Conservation biology for twenty years. He has also written over 250 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. He has served as a board member or adviser to eight foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and the Bioneers. Currently, he is a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado and Children and Nature Network. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, a “Visionary Leadership Award” from Second Nature, a National Leadership award from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education, the 2018 Leadership Award from the American Renewable Energy Institute, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Green Energy Ohio.Support the show Follow us on IG and FB at Bishop Rob Wright.

DEBORAH EDEN TULL, founder of Mindful Living Revolution, teaches the integration of compassionate awareness into every aspect of our lives, bridging personal and collective awakening in an age of global change. She is an engaged Buddhist teacher, spiritual activist, author, eco-dharma educator, and facilitator of The Work That Reconnects, a field created by Buddhist scholar and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy for transforming our love and pain for our world into compassionate action. Eden teaches dharma intertwined with post-patriarchal thought and practices, resting upon a lived knowledge of our unity with the more than human world. She has practiced meditation for 30 years and  trained for seven and a half years as a Buddhist monk at the Zen Monastery Peace Center, a silent Zen monastery in the Sierra foothills. She has been teaching for over 20 years. Eden's teaching emphasizes relational presence, acknowledging the personal, interpersonal, intrapersonal, transpersonal, societal, ecological, mystical, and global impacts of embodied dharma. She has worked with a wide range of audiences, from dharma students and spiritual teachers to those practicing or teaching secular mindfulness, to concerned citizens, activists, leaders, and change agents, to parents, schools, inner city youth, nonprofits, corporations, and people who are incarcerated. Eden taught for many years with UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center, and has been collaborating with Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers since 2012, on the topics of Regenerative Leadership, Women's Leadership, and Sacred Activism. She is also a member of the national Eco-Dharma Advisory Committee of Buddhist teachers and leaders in the eco-dharma movement. Eden has a special gift for facilitating mindful inquiry and fierce compassion, and bridging personal, ancestral, and collective healing. Weaving dharma with her embodiment of animism, deep ecology, shadow work, somatic awareness, ancestral healing, and conscious movement/dance, she helps people release limiting beliefs and collective biases that have been passed down over generations. She draws upon her own experience of navigating loss, illness, and trauma, guiding people to embrace the mystery and celebrate the value and alchemy of light and darkness as teachers of love. Having lived in or taught about sustainable communities and organic gardening/permaculture for decades, Eden weaves the essential wisdom of nature into everything she teaches. She currently resides in the mountains of western North Carolina, originally Cherokee land, with her husband Mark. She offers retreats, workshops, and consultations nationally and internationally, integrating presence and partnership with nature. Eden feels that the most important aspect of being a teacher is continually being a student. She continually immerses herself in trainings and retreats, recognizing direct experience as our truest guide. She works closely with mentor Pam Weiss, author of A Bigger Sky: Awakening a Fierce Feminine Buddhism, to deepen her embodiment of Soto Zen Buddhism in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi.

DEBORAH EDEN TULL, founder of Mindful Living Revolution, teaches the integration of compassionate awareness into every aspect of our lives, bridging personal and collective awakening in an age of global change. She is an engaged Buddhist teacher, spiritual activist, author, eco-dharma educator, and facilitator of The Work That Reconnects, a field created by Buddhist scholar and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy for transforming our love and pain for our world into compassionate action. Eden teaches dharma intertwined with post-patriarchal thought and practices, resting upon a lived knowledge of our unity with the more than human world. She has practiced meditation for 30 years and  trained for seven and a half years as a Buddhist monk at the Zen Monastery Peace Center, a silent Zen monastery in the Sierra foothills. She has been teaching for over 20 years. Eden's teaching emphasizes relational presence, acknowledging the personal, interpersonal, intrapersonal, transpersonal, societal, ecological, mystical, and global impacts of embodied dharma. She has worked with a wide range of audiences, from dharma students and spiritual teachers to those practicing or teaching secular mindfulness, to concerned citizens, activists, leaders, and change agents, to parents, schools, inner city youth, nonprofits, corporations, and people who are incarcerated. Eden taught for many years with UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center, and has been collaborating with Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers since 2012, on the topics of Regenerative Leadership, Women's Leadership, and Sacred Activism. She is also a member of the national Eco-Dharma Advisory Committee of Buddhist teachers and leaders in the eco-dharma movement. Eden has a special gift for facilitating mindful inquiry and fierce compassion, and bridging personal, ancestral, and collective healing. Weaving dharma with her embodiment of animism, deep ecology, shadow work, somatic awareness, ancestral healing, and conscious movement/dance, she helps people release limiting beliefs and collective biases that have been passed down over generations. She draws upon her own experience of navigating loss, illness, and trauma, guiding people to embrace the mystery and celebrate the value and alchemy of light and darkness as teachers of love. Having lived in or taught about sustainable communities and organic gardening/permaculture for decades, Eden weaves the essential wisdom of nature into everything she teaches. She currently resides in the mountains of western North Carolina, originally Cherokee land, with her husband Mark. She offers retreats, workshops, and consultations nationally and internationally, integrating presence and partnership with nature. Eden feels that the most important aspect of being a teacher is continually being a student. She continually immerses herself in trainings and retreats, recognizing direct experience as our truest guide. She works closely with mentor Pam Weiss, author of A Bigger Sky: Awakening a Fierce Feminine Buddhism, to deepen her embodiment of Soto Zen Buddhism in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi.

In this episode, Indigenous scholar and organizer Nick Estes explores how Indigenous land-based and Earth-centered societies are advancing regenerative solutions and campaigns to transform capitalism. “Eco-nomics” puts Indigenous leadership at the forefront of assuring a habitable planet. Featuring Nick Estes, Ph.D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), is a Professor at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota writers. In 2014, he was a co-founder of The Red Nation in Albuquerque, NM, an organization dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism. He serves on its editorial collective and writes its bi-weekly newsletter. Nick Estes is also the author of: Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. Resources Nick Estes – The Age of the Water Protector and Climate Chaos (video) | Bioneers 2022 Keynote Indigenous Pathways to a Regenerative Future (video) | Bioneers 2021 Panel The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth | The Red Nation Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon | Indigenous Environmental Network 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 Production Assistance: Anna Rubanova This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Through colonization, hyper capitalism, and unaddressed trauma, many of us have forgotten how to play our part in the orchestra of the natural world. Join a conversation between two remarkable activists and legal practitioners from different continents, working in different communities, but who happen to share a belief in the power of creative expression help us reconnect to the entire web of life. They discuss interdependence, forgotten ways of relating to each other and all species, and how well-harmonized songs can bring delight and balance to the human spirit, to trees and plants and to our fellow fauna. Resources Video of this conversation from the 2024 Bioneers Conference Featuring Erin Matariki Carr, of Ngāi Tūhoe and Ngāti Awa descent, lives in her traditional homelands in Aotearoa/New Zealand and works in law and policy, with a focus on the interface between Indigenous and Western legal systems and methodologies. She previously worked as Manager of Planning & Design to create and implement policies under the world-first legislation conferring legal personhood to the Te Urewera rainforest. Matariki is currently a project lead at RIVER, where she focuses on the constitutional transformation movement in Aotearoa with a number of other teams, including Tūmanako Consultants and Te Kuaka NZA. Learn more at weareriver.earth Claudia Peña, Executive Director of For Freedoms, an artist collective that centers art and creativity as a catalyst for transformative connection and collective liberation, serves on the faculty at UCLA School of Law and in that school's Gender Studies Department. She is also the founding Co-Director of the Center for Justice at UCLA, home of the Prison Education Program, which creates innovative courses that enable faculty and students to learn from and alongside currently incarcerated participants. Claudia has devoted her life to justice work through community organizing, transformative and restorative justice, consciousness-raising across silos, coalition-building, teaching, advocacy through law and policy, and the arts. Learn more at forfreedoms.com This is an excerpt from a conversation recorded at a Bioneers conference. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

When we allow our hearts to be broken open by hearing the stories of our fellow human beings, we build community and compassion. That is the passionate message of Sister Simone Campbell, one of the most renowned figures in contemporary faith-based progressive activism. She and the other rebel Nuns on the Bus are touring the country, bridging divides, transforming politics and keeping the faith. Featuring Sister Simone Campbell is a poet, social justice attorney and one of the nation's most influential faith-based progressive activists. She led the famous 2012 “Nuns on the Bus” tour to challenge Congressional budget proposals that radically slashed programs for the poor. She shares her vision of how we can heal our divisions and differences, create a renewed sense of community, and build a far more just, peaceful, verdant and compassionate world. Introduction by Reverend Sally Bingham, Interfaith Power and Light. Resources Sister Simone Campbell speaking at Bioneers 2015 This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Cheryl Esposito welcomes Shailja Patel, an award-winning Kenyan poet, artist & political activist. Growing up in Kenya Shailja experienced the impact of war on the lives and spirit of the people. Her path took her on a journey from working on Wall Street to living a monastic life, running non-profits, eventually finding her voice in poetry. Today she is a performance artist bringing her work to people around the world. Her one-woman show, Migritude, unfolds hidden histories of women's lives in the bootprint of Empire, from India to East Africa. Shailja's powerful performances bring her audiences to an introspective space of connection with the raw emotion and impact of war and oppression. The irresistible passion and eloquence of her words touches people at a core level and inspires them to take action. Shailja recently performed at Bioneers and said, “The fifteen-second pindrop silence after I finished my performance was worth three standing ovations.” Words shape us. They inspire. Join the conversation.

Today's corporate, capitalist economy is radically unequal, ecologically unsustainable, and embedded in recurring boom-and-bust cycles of crisis. Not surprisingly, people are looking for alternatives. What if, instead of tweaking the system to reduce the damage, we reorganized entirely so that both local and national economies produced better outcomes for people, communities and the planet in the first place?  That's the essence of community wealth building, the focus of this episode with guest host Laura Flanders, featuring Democracy Collaborative Distinguished Senior Fellow, Marjorie Kelly; Preston City Council Member, Matthew Brown in the UK; and community wealth building adviser to the Scottish Government, Neil McInroy. This episode is part 2 of a 4-part series exploring how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing their assets, anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people – from land to money and finance. Explore the full series here. Resources Democracy Collaborative Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and The Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today's Crises Action Guide for Advancing Community Wealth Building in the United States | Democracy Collaborative Gar Alperovitz – Replacing Corporate Capitalism: Why We Need a Next System | Bioneers 2018 Keynote Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reader Guest Host Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of Laura Flanders & Friends, which airs on PBS stations nationwide. She is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Media Center. Credits This series is co-produced by Bioneers and Laura Flanders & Friends Laura Flanders & Friends Producers: Laura Flanders and Abigail Handel Production Assistance: Jeannie Hopper and David Neumann Bioneers Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

In this special episode of the Bioneers, guest host Laura Flanders explores “Community Wealth Building,” a model that democratizes the economy, creates more cooperative businesses, better care for communities, and builds wealth for the many, not just the few. This episode features American political economist, historian, and author Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, along with India Pierce Lee about her work with the Collaborative in Cleveland, Ohio; and John McMicken, Executive Director of Cleveland's Evergreen Cooperative Corporation. This episode is part 1 of a 4-part series exploring how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing their assets, anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people – from land to money and finance. Explore the full series here. Guest Host Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of Laura Flanders & Friends, which airs on PBS stations nationwide. She is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Media Center. Credits This series is co-produced by Bioneers and Laura Flanders & Friends Laura Flanders & Friends Producers: Laura Flanders and Abigail Handel Production Assistance: Jeannie Hopper and David Neumann Bioneers Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris Resources Democracy Collaborative Evergreen Cooperatives How to Make a Democratic Economy | Laura Flanders & Friends Action Guide for Advancing Community Wealth Building in the United States | Democracy Collaborative Gar Alperovitz – Replacing Corporate Capitalism: Why We Need a Next System | Bioneers 2018 Keynote Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reader

In this episode on community wealth building, we look at how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing the assets that exist in their place. It's the Kryptonite to the corporate model that extracts wealth from communities. Instead, they're anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people - from land to money and finance. We hear from Nicole Ndumele from the Center for American Progress; Mike Strode, from The Kola Nut Collaborative; and Deyanira del Río of the New Economy Project. Resources Center for American Progress New Economy Project Open Collective Foundation The Kola Nut Collaborative Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reader This episode is part 1 of a 4-part series exploring how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing their assets, anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people – from land to money and finance. Explore the full series here. Guest Host Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of Laura Flanders & Friends, which airs on PBS stations nationwide. She is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Media Center. Credits This series is co-produced by Bioneers and Laura Flanders & Friends Laura Flanders & Friends Producers: Laura Flanders and Abigail Handel Production Assistance: Jeannie Hopper and David Neumann Bioneers Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Housing is a human right, or so says the International Declaration of Human Rights. But could we organize our economies with that in mind? Across the country, communities have land and properties and people who need homes. What's stopping us bringing them together in a way that increases community wealth and wellbeing for everyone? That's the question we explore in this episode of our special series on community wealth building, produced in collaboration with the radio and tv show, Laura Flanders & Friends. Featuring Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Writer; Saoirse Gowan, Policy Associate with the Democracy Collaborative; Noni D. Session, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. This episode is part 1 of a 4-part series exploring how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing their assets, anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people – from land to money and finance. Explore the full series here. Resources Democracy Collaborative East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reader Guest Host Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of Laura Flanders & Friends, which airs on PBS stations nationwide. She is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Media Center. Credits This series is co-produced by Bioneers and Laura Flanders & Friends Laura Flanders & Friends Producers: Laura Flanders and Abigail Handel Production Assistance: Jeannie Hopper and David Neumann Bioneers Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch Producer: Teo Grossman Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Hello to you listening in Sebastopol, California!Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is Stories From Women Who Walk with 60 Seconds for Story Prompt Friday and your host, Diane Wyzga.  I have been following legendary singer/songwriter, actress, teacher, and broad-coalition activist Holly Near for decades and decades. Once upon a time I sat in on a concert she gave at the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church in Costa Mesa, California. My life was never the same. I felt then that music can be a vehicle for empathy, understanding, introspection, and social evolution in a rapidly changing world.Of her many songs that speak to me and millions of listeners like me Planet Called Home never fails to resonate. It's the kind of earth-moving inspirational that will make your socks roll up and down and get you using your creativity to help this planet called home. How? “If each one did just one thing beautifully * Complex life on Earth might not die.”Click HERE to listen to Holly Near sing Planet Called Home/The Souls Are Coming Back on her recording of the same name.Click HERE to watch and listen to Holly Near's performance of Planet Called Home given at the 2003 Bioneers National Conference.Story Prompt: What is the one thing you can do beautifully? Are you ready to brave what it will take to do that for our  Planet Called Home? Write that story!  Planet Called Home [Song by Holly Near]… Can you call on your imaginationAs if telling a myth to a childPut in the fantastical, wonderful, magicalAdd the romantic, the brave and the wild… Once upon a time there was a powerSo great that no one could know its namePeople tried to change it and rule with itBut always such arrogance ended in shame.… Thousands of years would pass in a momentHundreds of cultures would come and goEach generation with a glorious callingEven when they were too busy to know… And then one day after two millenniaWhich after all was a small part of timeHundreds of souls found their way out of nowhereTo be on earth at the threat of decline… Let's all go, they moved as one beingEven though each would arrive here aloneThey promised to work in grace with each otherTo brave the beautiful planet called home… Now, there was no promise that they could save itBut how exciting to give it a tryIf each one did just one thing beautifullyComplex life on Earth might not die… And so they arrived in a spectrum of colorsThe population on earth did explodeSome threw themselves in front of disasterAnd others slowly carried their load… Some adopted small girls from ChinaSome lived high in the branches of treesSome died as martyrs, some lived as healersAnd, some bravely walked with a dreadful disease… They mingled among each class and each cultureNot one of them could be identifiedBut together they altered just enough momentsTo help the lost and the terrified… To step outside of our egos and bodiesTo know for once that we truly are oneThen quickly we would forget to rememberBut that's okay, their job was well done… And earth went on for another millenniumNow its time for this song to endThis magical story of hope and wonderInvites you all to wake up and pretend to be… Fabulous creatures sent from the powerSouls that have come with one purpose in mindTo do one thing that will alter the outcomeAnd maybe together we can do it in time… Can you call on your imaginationAs if telling a myth to a childPut in the fantastical, wonderful, magicalAdd the romantic, the brave and the wildThe souls are comin backThe souls are comin backThe souls are comin back!You're always invited: “Come for the stories - stay for the magic!” Speaking of magic, would you subscribe and spread the word with a generous 5-star review and comment - it helps us all - and join us next time!Meanwhile, stop by my Quarter Moon Story Arts website to:✓ Check out Services I Offer,✓ For a no-obligation conversation about your communication challenges, get in touch with me today✓ Stay current with Diane on as “Wyzga on Words” on Substack and on LinkedInStories From Women Who Walk Production TeamPodcaster: Diane F Wyzga & Quarter Moon Story ArtsMusic: Mer's Waltz from Crossing the Waters by Steve Schuch & Night Heron MusicAll content and image © 2019 to Present Quarter Moon Story Arts. All rights reserved. 

By around 2044, the U.S. will become a majority-minority nation. This seismic demographic shift has triggered a cultural earthquake, provoking a radical spike in hate crimes. In times of massive disruption and economic stress, what Carl Jung called the “shadow side of the psyche” comes into play: the pronounced psychological tendency in the collective psyche is to project these shadow qualities with unusual potency onto whomever people see as “the other.” But is there also a deeper story? Perhaps the question to ask is: Who benefits? In this half hour, we hear from Heather McGhee of Demos. She sees a direct connection between today's extreme inequality and this peak moment of racial panic and white anxiety. FEATURING Heather McGhee, distinguished senior fellow and former president of Demos, is an award-winning thought leader on the national stage whose writing and research appear in numerous outlets, including The New York Times and The Nation. Her latest book is The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. RESOURCES Heather McGhee's Keynote at Bioneers 2017 | A New “We The People” For a Sustainable Future This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

As a backlash against LGBTQ rights escalates into an authoritarian crusade, acclaimed author and queer activist Taylor Brorby asks how we can still be fighting this battle? As a writer addressing the fossil fuel industry's acceleration in the midst of climate chaos, Taylor is forced to choose between the existential crises of the assaults on nature and on LGBTQ people. It's all connected, he says, as he seeks to reconcile nature, culture, diversity and belonging. Featuring Taylor Brorby, a Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, is an award-winning, widely published writer and poet as well as a contributing editor at North American Review who also serves on the editorial boards of Terrain.org and Hub City Press. Taylor regularly speaks around the country on issues related to extractive economies, queerness, disability, and climate change, and is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land; Crude: Poems; Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience; and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. Resources Taylor Brorby's keynote Bioneers 2024 – Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains Learn more about Taylor Brorby at taylorbrorby.com 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, we explore the controversial topic of carbon capture and storage (CCS) with insights from various experts and activists. We begin with excerpts from Taylor Brobrey's keynote at the 2024 Bioneers Conference, where he shares his personal experiences growing up in North Dakota amidst the coal and oil industries. Next, we hear from climate thinker Gabrielle Walker, who discusses the necessity of carbon removals in her TED talk. Finally, energy expert and environmental activist Maury Wolfson joins Jack Eidt to debunk the myths surrounding CCS and discuss the reality of its implementation and cost. Tune in to gain a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and false promises of carbon capture and storage. Most of us understand we are in a global climate emergency. Data confirmed last month was the hottest May on record, putting the Earth on a 12-month streak of record-breaking temperatures. What we need is to immediately transition away from the burning of fossil fuels toward renewable power sources, but also a focus on more efficient energy use, and most importantly, a comprehensive plan for massive conservation and rethinking the way we do business. But global corporations want to continue with their present business model focused on coal, oil, fossil gas, ethanol, and industrial agro-fueled biodiesel. And the way they do it is advancing “solutions” like Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage. For an extended interview and other benefits, become an EcoJustice Radio patron at https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio Clip Taylor Brobry from Bioneers: https://youtu.be/17NNiLXQoaM?si=SC4qROI6KlpuAO8v What You Need to Know About Carbon Removal | Gabrielle Walker | TED Clip from TED Talk Gabrielle Walker: https://youtu.be/60e6u_1TEIs?si=Rm7HXkPPn1S51p9m Resources/Articles: Info on Project Tundra in North Dakota: https://www.projecttundrand.com/ “The carbon capture crux: Lessons learned,” Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis https://ieefa.org/resources/carbon-capture-crux-lessons-learned Taylor Brorby [https://taylorbrorby.com/] grew in the dynamic shortgrass prairie of western North Dakota, a youth that coincided with the brutal physical and psychic scarring of his surroundings by the coal and oil industry, a fate not made any easier by being a young gay boy enthralled by classical music, art, fishing, and poetry. From here, Taylor became a poet, writer and dedicated activist, an eloquent critic of the fossil fuel industry, penning, among other works, the memoir: Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land, the essays in Civil Disobedience, and co-editing: Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. Morey Wolfson has spent his career in energy and environmental policy. He is a Former Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) regulator, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) employee, and governors' energy policy advisor. Jack Eidt is an urban planner, environmental journalist, and climate organizer, as well as award-winning fiction writer. He is Co-Founder of SoCal 350 Climate Action and Executive Producer of EcoJustice Radio. He is also Founder and Publisher of WilderUtopia [https://wilderutopia.com], a website dedicated to the question of Earth sustainability, finding society-level solutions to environmental, community, economic, transportation and energy needs. Podcast Website: http://ecojusticeradio.org/ Podcast Blog: https://www.wilderutopia.com/category/ecojustice-radio/ Support the Podcast: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Executive Producer and Host: Jack Eidt Engineer and Original Music: Blake Quake Beats Episode 224 Photo credit: Kanenori on Pixabay

To kick off Screen Free Week, listen as author Britt Gondolfi and illustrator Amanda Romanick discuss their picture bookFontaine the Pigeon Starts a Revolution and the impacts that screens are having on children and families.Britt Gondolfi grew up in the elder millennial era. She reminisces about having a screen-free childhood, minus a little Nintendo, TV, and slow dial-up desktop, but no smartphones. Concerned over how her cell phone took her attention away from her child, she wrote Look Up! Fontaine the Pigeon Starts a Revolution as an urban legend joke for her daughter. Now, if she ever gets too caught up in her cell phone, her six-year-old will politely remind her, “Mom, you better put that away before a bird poops on you! She works as a Rights of Nature policy advocate for the Bioneers organization and is a recent graduate of Loyola University College of Law. As a former teacher and lover of literature, typewriters, and poetry, she hopes this book will inspire people to look at their relationship with technology and take more time to look up.Amanda Romanick is a multi-disciplinary artist whose passion and education for craft began at the young age of 5-years-old when she was hand-selected for the Talented Arts Program in her hometown parish and she began to focus heavily on creative education and outlets, like drawing and painting. Eventually, she graduated with honors from the Savannah College of Art and Design, with a concentration in illustration and sequential art. Amanda is also a mom of a young child and felt the need to do her to create more balance between natural engagement and screen use. Britt and Amanda are good friends and creative partners, and enjoy playdates with their kiddos in New Orleans, where they are both based.

This week, we focus on the enduring legacy of 94-year old elder Oren Lyons, Onondaga Chief and a beacon of Indigenous culture and environmental activism. We explore Oren's insights from the Bioneers conference, his reflections on the Haudenosaunee principles of peace, and his impassioned plea for a value shift towards communal living and environmental harmony. His keynote address was entitled To Survive, We Must Transform our Values. Discover the unwritten history of Turtle Island and the wisdom that could lead humanity to a more just and sustainable world. Bioneers [https://bioneers.org/] is a nonprofit organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. Founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by social entrepreneurs Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, they act as a hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges. We also share Oren Lyons – “We are Part of the Earth” from the Sacred Land Film Project, part of Earth Island Institute. Oren Lyons also decodes the classic story "The Wizard of Oz", from a Native American perspective. L. Frank Baum's tale as a Utopian American Dream soft-peddles an anti-nature-prejudice amid dazzling urban-industrial landscapes. This bias manifests at the expense of the Earth's resources, and contributes to today's environmental, economic, and social collapse. Finally, we include an excerpt from the Indigenous Forum at the Bioneers Conference in Berkeley, California. Recorded by friend of the show Janet Sager in March 2024. The panel is entitled Listening to Wisdom Keepers. We feature the moderator, Alexis Bunten, co-director of the Indigeneity Program at Bioneers, a song from Greg Castro, and discussions from Casey Camp-Horinek of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, and of course, Oren Lyons. For an extended interview and other benefits, become an EcoJustice Radio patron at https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio More Info: Bioneers Conference https://conference.bioneers.org/ Oren Lyons, “We Are Part of the Earth” Sacred Lands Film Project: https://youtu.be/bSwmqZ272As?si=crGAyku6eCrFwbaC Oren Lyons on The Wizard of Oz, Sacred Lands Film Project: https://youtu.be/t8ttzSwYFa8?si=43nbAQNXGPcz1ZuI More on Oren Lyons: https://wilderutopia.com/international/earth/oren-lyons-on-the-unity-of-the-earth/ Oren Lyons, a Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan who serves as a Member Chief of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs and the Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy (also known as the Haudenosaunee peoples), is an accomplished artist, social and environmental activist, and author; a Professor Emeritus at SUNY Buffalo; a leading voice at the UN Permanent Forum on Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples; and the recipient of many prestigious national and international prizes including The UN NGO World Peace Prize. Jack Eidt is an urban planner, environmental journalist, and climate organizer, as well as award-winning fiction writer. He is Co-Founder of SoCal 350 Climate Action and Executive Producer of EcoJustice Radio. He is also Founder and Publisher of WilderUtopia [https://wilderutopia.com], a website dedicated to the question of Earth sustainability, finding society-level solutions to environmental, community, economic, transportation and energy needs. Podcast Website: http://ecojusticeradio.org/ Podcast Blog: https://www.wilderutopia.com/category/ecojustice-radio/ Support the Podcast: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Executive Producer and Host: Jack Eidt Engineer and Original Music: Blake Quake Beats Episode 215 Photo credit: Sacred Land Film Project

In this episode, Kimberly Carfore returns to the podcast to talk about this year's Bioneers conference, which was held in Berkeley, California on March 28-30. Bioneers is a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization based in New Mexico and California. Founded in 1990 by Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, Bioneers (a neologism for "biological pioneers") focuses on the value and wisdom of the natural world, emphasizing that responses to problems must be in harmony with the design of natural systems. The conference is broadly interdisciplinary and cross-sector, with academics, artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and social innovators meeting to address the pressing challenges facing life on Earth. Kim discusses her experience at the conference, focusing especially on some of the speakers who presented at the Indigenous Forum.

https://redearthmovement.org/ ... https://www.cosmiclabyrinth.world/ ...

Tune in this week to learn all about the local peace economy - what is it, and why does it matter? We'll hear from CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans about why she started integrating local peace economy work into her anti-war activism and how you can begin to grow the local peace economy in your community. We'll also hear from presenters and attendees at the recent Bioneers conference in Berkeley, CA about how the local peace economy is alive in their lives right now. How do we grow the seeds of peace in our community? Join us to find out.

Despite the popularity of permaculture, homesteading, regen ag, and all these other buzz terms we hear, many of the people promoting these ideas, including myself, are quite new and inexperienced. It's still rare to find people who can offer insight and wisdom from decades or a whole lifetime of living with regenerative systems. Sure, you can still find quite a few hardy old timers who know a lot about resilience and self sufficiency, but even though there is a ton of wisdom to be gleaned from those life experiences I've found many of them lacking in the whole picture, systems level thinking that informs a regenerative world view. I've been lucky enough to interview and highlight some of those voices on this show in the past, and today is another example of a person who's work and life philosophy has been a big inspiration to me. Many of you may know Ben Falk as the developer of Whole Systems Design, LLC, his company created as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben's integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont's Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the regenerative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds a master's degree in land-use planning and design. He has conducted more than 650 site development and land inspection consultations across the US and abroad, and has facilitated dozens of courses on property selection, permaculture design, and resilient systems. He has given keynote addresses and presented dozens of workshops at venues ranging from Bioneers to the Omega Institute. Ben is the author of the award-winning book The Resilient Farm and Homestead (Chelsea Green, 2013) and serves as an Advisory Council for the international regeneration group Ecosystem Restoration Camps, which is incidentally how I first got in touch with him back when I worked with that organization. Today we'll be going beyond the typical talking points of regenerative design principles, reading the landscape and life hacks for permaculture enthusiasts, partly because we already went over them in the first interview he and I did together a couple seasons ago. Instead, Ben and I explore the reflections he has on over two decades of living the lifestyle that he designs and promotes for others. We look into the biggest learnings that have come from evolving alongside and in service to perennial food systems as well as what he might do differently if he could go back and redesign things. Ben also explains how his life experience has informed his design work and consultancy for clients, the patterns that have emerged from the endless experiments that he's run, and where his focus is in this stage of life, both in his family and personal life as well as his work on the land. Since I'm only in the second year of designing and building my own farmstead, I find it invaluable to gain insights into all of these reflections almost as a way to peek into one of a million possible futures in hopes of setting a solid foundation and maybe avoid some pitfalls ahead. 

On today's show, I spoke to two amazing climate leaders that will be featured at the 35th annual Bioneers conference.  The first one, Martin Bourque, executive director of Ecology Center and the second, Najari Smith, executive director of Rich City Rides. conference.bioneers.org The post 35th Annual Bioneers Conference appeared first on KPFA.

ANNNNDD WE'RE BACK! In this episode  continue the third series where we speak with southeastern folks who have received and bear their traditional tattoos. This time we're speaking with guest Jenna Walkingstick (Cherokee) and guest hosts Lisa Fruichantie (Seminole/Mvskoke) and Angie Comeaux (Mvskoke/Choctaw). We cover a range of topics including Jenna and Lisa's experiences receiving and bearing traditional southeastern facial tattoos, positive and negative experiences around receiving traditional tattoos, body sovereignty, accountability, diversity in NDN country, interconnectedness to land and of tribal nations, the role of plants, and more! Additionally we make some major announcements:Lisa Fruichantie has become the first Executive Director of Inchunwa!She'll be representing Inchunwa at the Bioneers conference in Berkeley Inchunwa will be at Indigi Pop X (IPX) April 12th-14th at the First American's Museum in Oklahoma City! We'll have a booth the whole time and will have educational and interactive activities - and maybe even a chance to experience what it might be like (briefly) to bear traditional designs. Like the Indigenous Futurisms Festival back in June of 2023, Brit'll be doing a live food demo on Saturday April 13th.  On Sunday April 14th, Inchunwa will host a panel with Chickasaw Artist Dustin Mater (@dustign); Cherokee Artist Keli Gonzales (@sideshow_kel); Cherokee & Mvskoke Tattoo Practitioner and Actress Nathalie Standingcloud (@nattatt8); Chickasaw Artist & Language Advocate  Faithlyn Seawright (@faithlyntaloaseawright); Mvskoke Artist & former Inchunwa podcast guest host Brit Postoak (@brittpostoak); Seminole elder & knowledge keeper David Frank; Seminole Nation member & Inchunwa Executive Director Lisa Fruichantie (@fruichantie), and Choctaw descendant and Inchunwa team member Brit Reed (@nitaohoyo). The panel will last for two hours with an intermission and a Q&A. Get your tickets at https://indigenouscomiccon.com/. In May, the Inchunwa Project leadership will be hosting a retreat focused on the design and build of our apprenticeship program. This closed gathering will include a diverse cross section of SE tribal culture bearers and wisdom keepers and made possible by a grant from the Southern Movement Media Fund.To celebrate officially stepping into the second phase of Inchunwa and the amazing things to come, we will be hosting a raffle that will begin Saturday March 23, 2024 and end Friday March 29th, 2024. This raffle is a two night stay at the Golden Moon Hotel & Casino in Choctaw, Mississippi. In addition to the two night stay at the Golden Moon Hotel & Casino, it includes dinner for two at Phillip M's, Breakfast for two at The Bistro, and - most excitedly 1 round of golf for two at Dancing Rabbit Golf Club and/or Spa Treatment for two at The Spa. Raffle tickets are $20 eachProceeds will be going towards raising funds for the creation and development of the traditional tattoo apprenticeship program and building the Inchunwa Project admin & capacity structure for key items such as a website. Package can be used any time up to April 30th, 2024. As travel to Choctaw, MS will not be included, we encourage folks who live close enough to drive or are able to purchase airline tickets before April 30th, 2024 to participate. To purchase raffle tickets, go to our paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/inchunwaPlease include your email and social media handles in the description so that we can alert you if you win. 

Nina Simons is a women's leadership pioneer and co-founder of Bioneers. She is the author of the book, Nature, Culture, and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. In this episode, Karen talks with Nina about the landscape of yin leadership, a kind of leadership that values spaciousness, nature, relationships, and ritual.    Resources for this episode can be found here: http://daringtorest.com/podcast/88  

Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination. Places of mystery and magic – of wildness and wisdom – of vision and dreaming. Yet beyond mythic realms of imagination, we've largely treated forests as inert physical resources to satisfy human needs and desires. The main operative science behind this commodification has been market science – how to extract maximum resources and profits. Suzanne Simard is a revolutionary researcher who is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial. The story Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other – for the long haul. Featuring Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, is an expert in the synergies and complexities of forests and the development of sustainable forest stewardship practices. Her groundbreaking research centers on the relationships between plants, microbes, soils, carbon, nutrients and water that underlie the adaptability of ecosystems, especially the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate interplant communication. Learn more about Suzanne Simard and her work at her website. Explore More Dispatches From the Mother Trees, Suzanne Simard's keynote address to the 2021 Bioneers Conference, in which she discusses the dire global consequences of logging old-growth rainforests, and nature-based solutions that combine Western science and Indigenous knowledge for preserving and caring for these invaluable forest ecosystems for future generations. Lessons from the Underground, a panel discussion from the 2021 Bioneers Conference featuring Suzanne Simard as well as Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery, a wife and husband team of scientific researchers whose groundbreaking work on the microbial life of soil has revealed its crucial importance to human wellbeing and survival. Moderated by Bioneers' Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan.  Intelligence in Nature, a deep-dive resource featuring leading experts in this burgeoning field. What We Owe Our Trees, an article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Get ready for Women's History Month! In this episode, Jocelyn talks to Nina Simons, author and co-founder of Bioneers. They talk about the importance of human connectivity to each other and nature. Nina shares her unexpected path to leadership and listening to others helps her growth. Follow Nina on Instagram @1ninasimons. To learn more about her journey and her book, visit https://www.ninasimons.com/. To learn more about Bioneers and the annual conference March 28-30 - https://bioneers.org/. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inscribinginclusion/support

Today on the show I interview Sylvia Ghazarian, Executive Director of Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, the largest national independent abortion fund. As former Chair of the Commission on the Status of Women for 12 years, she has championed policy advocacy on healthcare, poverty, domestic/sexual violence and human trafficking in Los Angeles. Sylvia is from California, and identifies as middle eastern and a woman of color.We discuss:Importance of our national abortion fund and the need to destigmatize this common health procedure.Thinking Bigger Than Roe as we head into what would have been the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade.How leadership development and career paths can be formed in unexpected ways.She recommended the book Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown and the documentary The Burning Times.Some other podcasts about Roe vs. Wade:326 50 Years of Ms Magazine with Kathy Spillar296 Reclaiming Abortion as Healthcare With Joan LaMunyon Sanford I want to personally invite you to the Bioneers Conference. As Bioneers celebrates its 35th-anniversary conference, the urgency of transformative change is starkly evident. It is more important now than ever that we connect and scale brilliant social movements to enact the kinds of breakthrough solutions that this earth needs. The clock is ticking. The call to action resounds: We must recognize our collective power, understanding that what we do to one another resonates with our treatment of the Earth.Previous episode with Nina Simons, the co-founder of Bioneers, https://wellwomanlife.com/captivate-podcast/297show/Register now for #Bioneers2024 at conference.bioneers.org Use discount code WellWoman20!The Well Woman Show is thankful for support from Collective Action Strategies – a consulting firm that supports systemic change so that women and families thrive, and by the Well Woman Life Movement Challenge Quiz at wellwomanlife.com/quiz

Alyssa Calder Hulme: [00:00:00] Welcome to the women of ambition podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Culler Hume. And today we have a fantastic guest on our show. Nina Simons is co founder and chief relationship officer at Bioneers and leads it's every woman leadership program throughout her career, spanning the nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, corporate, and. Philanthropic sectors. Nina has worked with nearly a thousand diverse women leaders across disciplines, race, class, age, and orientation to create conditions for mutual learning, trust, and leadership development. She co edited Moonrise, The Power of Women Leading from the Heart and authored Nature, Culture, and the Sacred. A Woman Listens for Leadership, which is the book we're going to talk about here today, was released as a second edition in 2022 with an accompanying discussion guide and embodied. Practice. Nina received the Goy Peace Award with her husband and partner, Kenny Ausubel for pioneering work to promote nature inspired innovations for restoring the earth and our [00:01:00] human community, which is pretty incredible. So thank you so much for being here, Nina.  Nina Simons: Thank you, Alyssa. It's great to be with you. Um,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: this is your beautiful book. You can see it behind her if you're watching the video. Um, it's beautiful. This artwork is fantastic. Um, and I, I'll just start by saying that, you know, I, I get reached out to by a lot of PR teams and different people wanting me to promote the material. And, I'm really picky, but yours is the first one that I, I read and I really loved and am deciding to share it because, um, I think what your, your message here is, is really incredible. It's really holistic. And I think it's something that we really need to talk about. So thank you so much for, for me, for writing this book and publishing it. And. Talking about being like a feminist as a white woman who's trying to, um, decolonize perspectives, understand privilege, um, and also, [00:02:00] um, someone who's been in that space for so long. You have a lot of wisdom to share and a lot of experience. And I, I'm just really grateful that you're putting that out in the world and being vulnerable. So thank  Nina Simons: you. Oh, it's my honor and privilege. I feel really grateful to get to do it. Thank you, Elisa. Okay,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: so, I, so this book is about women's leadership, um, and you talk about it from your own personal experiences and then in working with other, with other leaders in, In lots of different communities, um, can we start maybe talking about, uh, what Bioneers is and where that word comes from, because I was really intrigued by that. Nina Simons: Sure. Sure. Well, the word was coined by my husband and partner because it's a contraction of biological pioneers. Okay. And the idea behind it was he started looking to find really innovative and effective [00:03:00] approaches. To healing our relationships with ourselves, each other and the earth and what he found was that some of the great innovators out there, many of them were looking to nature to heal nature and so there were nature sourced solutions and that's where the word Bioneers came from. But. Bioneers started as an annual gathering. Um, we started it in 1990 and over the years it has grown and grown and evolved tremendously so that now there is an annual face to face in person conference of about a year. 2500 or 3000 people, but there is also an incredible wealth of media that we put out. So we produce a radio series that wins awards many years and, um, a great newsletter and a lot of what motivated Bioneers in the first place was the recognition. [00:04:00] That the mainstream media tends to carry the bad news, but not the good news of the world. That's being born. And especially in this time when there's so much destruction and violence and coming apart, we all need to remember to give some of our time and energy to the world. That's being born because it's incredibly uplifting and inspiring and full of role models. And, and, um, that's what Pioneers is. And, um, what else did you ask me? I think that was the main question. No,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: it, it was. Um, one of the things that you talk about in your book is the difference between a Bioneer and a Pioneer. And how as in the Bioneer space, you are looking to To create with the world instead of imagining it as a blank space that doesn't have, um, life already living and I don't know, I'm not articulating it very well. Your book says it so much more [00:05:00] beautifully, but, um, co creating in that world with indigenous people with local knowledge with local plants and flora and fauna and all of those things. You speak maybe a little bit. to that? And, and why is that a revolutionary concept to an American white person?  Nina Simons: Oh, that's a great question. Well, and it's interesting as you frame it, it very much parallels my exploration with leadership because, um, what I've realized as a woman with all the privileges that having white skin gifts me in this country, um, and a fierce determination to become a better uh, anti racist, a better white ally, um, and to learn deeply what it means to do that. Um, part of what I've learned is that we actually need to invest in our own humility, and I think that's parallel to what you were asking because, um, [00:06:00] you know, Western civilization Tends to have us think of nature as resources and in fact an indigenous worldview thinks of nature as relatives And imagine how differently you would relate knowing that the trees and the Soil and the mycelium and the, you know, all of the elements are your relatives, rather than just resources to be mined or extracted or used. Um, so it really is about, you know, for me, what I've come to understand from all these years of immersing myself in both the challenges we face and. This amazing fount of solutions has been that, um, that the solutions we need are largely already in form all around us. And that what we need to do is quiet [00:07:00] our egos and our tendency toward hubris to learn from the allies that surround us. And that actually includes, um, people of different backgrounds. People of different classes and ages and orientations that I think a lot of what we're facing right now is a need to transform our culture by shifting our culture within ourselves first so that we relate to difference as a virtue rather than as an obstacle to be overcome. Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah, I, I love that in your book, you talk about a shift in culture and cultural change from a me to a we, and I, I really, I think that's such a succinct, fantastic way to, to talk about that. Um, and so I want to talk now about. In your book, you talk about leadership and being labeled as a leader and kind of your initial, um, being repulsed by that title and kind of your [00:08:00] transformation through that. So I would love to, I'd love to dig into that and then how your position and privilege as a leader has allowed you to exercise that humility and grow and learn with other people with maybe less privilege. Um, so, so talk to us a little bit about. Um, that stigma of leadership and, and maybe in conjunction with ambition, because I think it's a very similar stigma when a woman is trying or is in that place. Nina Simons: I do too. And it's been interesting to think about in relation to your podcast and recognize that, you know, social scientists have long observed that in our culture, when we raise boys, we raise them to crow when they achieve something. Whereas when we raise girls, we tell them not to crow, we tell them to be silent, to hold it to themselves. And really the models of virtue that [00:09:00] boys and girls are raised with are very, very different. And what I found When I was first called a leader, um, I was about 40 years old and I, I really didn't like it. I knew I was supposed to be flattered, but really I felt like it painted a target on my back. It was not a title I had ever aspired to. And. I knew from Bioneers that the earth is calling us all to be leaders now. And so I had to figure out how to reconcile those two things. And as I started convening women leaders, they would all come together immediately disavowing that they ever thought of themselves as leaders. So I found that it was a bigger issue than just me. And I think, you know, it relates to the, what you were just citing of the transition from a me culture to a weak culture, because really, um, I've done two books [00:10:00] now exploring leadership and how we are all co inventing and co creating new models of leadership. And, you know, I did that First, by exploring all of the talks from all of the leaders I most admired at Bioneers, and then deconstructing them to find patterns of how were they similar, and how were they different than my mental model, and, uh, and what I found was that they were all motivated from the heart, not the head. They were motivated by an internal passion to serve or defend or protect something. And not by a title or a graduate degree, um, they were often people who stepped up to do something when they didn't even know exactly what they could do. And it wasn't until they were in it that it began to reveal. And, And they [00:11:00] were, they were also people who, whose concept of leadership was involved sharing authority and sharing power. And so, you know, increasingly, I came to appreciate the Gloria Steinem thing of leaders are those who lift each, who lift others up. No, and, and as I explored that, I realized how important it was to both have your own sense of dignity and self love, but to have that balanced with humility so that you can recognize the gifts and talents and those around you and generously support them without feeling Threatened by the zero sum game of patriarchy that if someone else is good at something it means you're not so uh So I mean this latest book is sort of the latest Evolution of my thinking about leadership. It also talks about a lot of the [00:12:00] data about Women throughout the world and how their leadership is affecting change And, and how much, um, the research is proving that when women lead, everything gets better, you know, and so I think of the old model of leadership as an I model because it was driven by ego and personal achievement, you know, and, and I think of the new model that we're all co creating as a we model. Yeah,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: I love that. And that, I mean, it blends so well into my research on ambition, um, in terms of, you know, when we're looking at gender roles where men are socialized to be individualistic and to be competitive and to be climbing and, um, are expected to be in those leadership positions, but from that ego place and from that, um, Stamp of approval of a title or, uh, income or [00:13:00] education or whatever it is. And now women are, are exercising in these places, but we're showing up in new ways and we're showing up with different gifts and with different values and priorities. And then when we're given the title of leader, it doesn't sit right, or it feels wrong. Um, And I, and, or ambition, I ask people to be on the show and they're like, Oh, I'm not ambitious. I'm like, well, let's talk about it. Cause I think you might be. And I think that maybe what you're scared of is actually some of the values that people have linked with those words that, that don't fit. Um, yeah, I love, I, one of the things I love about your book is that you talk and cite so many different. Women and groups and, uh, people from all over the world and talk about how their collaborative community based relational practices and different values are really starting to change the world and how the power of the [00:14:00] grassroots movements across the world and how they are. Are changing our society. Um, how as a leader, uh, with a platform, um, I know you've done a lot of work to create leadership spaces, uh, that account for differences in, um, Class and race and lots of different perspectives and places like that. What was it like to start engaging in some of that work to try and make your spaces more equitable and accessible to people who have been systematically disenfranchised?  Nina Simons: Well, you know, there was a pivotal moment in my learning about that, Alyssa, when I read a book by a woman named Linda Tar Whalen called Women Lead the Way, and what she cites in that book is that until any minority Has reached at least 30 percent in a group, they [00:15:00] don't feel flanked enough to fully show up. And that was revelatory to me and my co facilitators. And at that moment, we agreed that we would set a minimum of 30 percent women of color in our trainings and that we would have a woman of color on our facilitation team. So that one third of the facilitation team was, was a person of color and everything shifted dramatically as soon as we did that. Um, You know, I think in a nutshell, it was in some ways scary to me to embark on that steep learning curve, but in other ways I felt really compelled to do it, and in retrospect, I feel really proud of myself that I embraced it so fully, and that in fact, I've reached a point in my life where I have Profound friendships and [00:16:00] relationships with women from all walks of life, and I feel like it's gifted me, you know, one of the things I think, Elisa, about this work is that people often talk about how hard it is, but they don't often talk about how rewarding it is. And I have found it to be some of the most rewarding work in my life. And it's gifted me some opportunities to experience in an embodied way what Dr. Martin Luther King called Beloved Community. And there's nothing like it, you know. It also helped me to understand Why the patriarchy has been so invested in socializing us to be in competition with each other rather than an alliance with each other. Because I think one of the most powerful things in the world is women in deep intentional alliance who can grow each other's leadership, [00:17:00] um, faster, better, deeper than anything else I've ever seen. So that's, that's some conditioning to get over. Yeah,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: absolutely. I know so many white feminist women of my generation are trying to, uh, be allies and do anti racism work, and there is so much, so much work left to be done. And then, you know, at some point, there comes a time when it's time to start actually enacting some of those things we're learning, and I, it's scary to move from a learning place to an action place, and then it's, I mean, Speaking for myself, like it's vulnerable to try and reach out and, and start that inclusive journey because it will most certainly involve some direct correction and education from the people around me. And, um, [00:18:00] I think what you're saying, it is a very vulnerable thing to, to learn something and then to try and change an organization and to, to make that big shift of who are we inviting and who are we putting in those positions of power and making those shifts. And I see it happening. And, you know, there are all kinds of companies with different quotas and they're trying to get certain rates of leadership in different areas. Um, it sounds like you did it. Fairly quickly and a steep learning curve, as you say, how did you, uh, so one of the phrases in your book is, uh, discomfort, resilience, learned, like that's part of that humility and letting go, um, allowing to be uncomfortable and to be educated and to continue to grow and listen to other people. What was that like? And, uh, you talk about. You know, getting feedback about cultural appropriation and, and [00:19:00] those types of things. Can you speak to that process and the humility or learning  Nina Simons: curve? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think one of the things that it requires is really coming face to face with having been raised by a culture that is deeply embedded in white supremacy. And so, you know, when you face that, when I face that in myself, it causes me to look at the stereotypes I carry, you know, my assumptions that someone may know less than me because they have a different background or a different color of skin. Um, and in fact, The more that the doing has taught me, I mean, I think studying and learning with other white people is really important and really necessary, but also, um, I think it's taught me a kind of [00:20:00] humility to understand that, you know, I'll give you an example. Um, early in my women's leadership work, I remember saying to a room of mixed women that I was raised in a home where anger was not expressed. And as a result, I didn't really know how to have a healthy relationship to anger and that I suspected that that might be true for many or most women. And I had an African American woman immediately push back and say, Not true in our culture. You know, I, I was raised to express my anger in a great and healthy and strong and quick way. And I thought, Wow, okay. Well, that's something I have to learn from you, you know, that's great. Um, so I think Let's see I think the other thing about it that I want to say and I I write about this in a longer essay in the book is that it's one thing to [00:21:00] learn about white supremacy and the racist history of our nation from your head. And it's another thing to feel it in your heart. And some of the hardest anti racism training experiences I've ever had has been witnessing other white people only respond from their heads. And they either get defensive or they have a rationale or, but But the truth is, um, we are living among people who are experiencing painful events due to the racism deeply embedded in our culture every single day, many, many times a day, and sometimes it's it involves fear for the life of their Children, you know, um, and. And so it requires really extending your empathy to somebody else's experience, and similarly, [00:22:00] as I've learned about Indigenous peoples and the horrors that we have inflicted on them, that this nation has, um, I find myself having tremendous amounts of empathy and compassion, and And then the trick is, how do you turn that into some sort of action? Because knowing about it, thinking about it, talking about it doesn't mean squat until you do something about it. And that means helping in whatever way you can. But it also means not falling into the trap of becoming a white savior. Instead, coming in a humble way to say, I want to be of service. How can I help? Tell me how I can help you because only they know what they need really. And, um, and put me to work, you know, I'll wash dishes. I'll take out the trash. Tell me what you need. Um, So, I mean, I guess that's the [00:23:00] best I can do in a generalized form. Yeah.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: So I want to mention today too, we are recording this on Memorial Day in the United States. The day that we remember people have passed away, our ancestors and our loved ones. And For me, a part of this process has been coming to terms with, with my own family history and the complicity in the settler colonizer state and in the patriarchy and, um, a lot of the contradictions that are there, that it's really tempting to paint a really pretty picture of pioneers or pilgrims, or, you know, the settlers that built this cabin and worked so hard to settle this area. And it's, It's, it's so many complicated overlapping truths of also, um, genocide and rape and, um. And land theft. And death and destruction. Yeah. Yeah. Land theft and, and continual [00:24:00] occupation. Here I am. Yeah. In Utah. I have no ancestors from Utah. And I'm still here. Yeah. And, um. It's, it's a paradox and it's hard and it's uncomfortable. Um, and I have children. So part of my work is to teach them about all of that and try and model how to continue to exist and then what to do next. Um, because I think if I'm running away from it in my own family system and my own family culture, like I can't. I'm not going to do anything on a greater scale that's actually helpful, you know. Nina Simons: Yeah, I sure do. And we're surrounded by so many examples of people who, you know, there's a saying, uh, in the healing communities that hurt people, hurt people. Yes. Right. And, and so what you're facing, Alisa, is very much an opportunity to break the chain and [00:25:00] to, um, to really choose something different for yourself and your kids. And I applaud you for doing so. It's a big deal.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Thank you. Yeah, it, it's hard. And it's vulnerable to, to put myself in positions to learn and to be corrected and to be told, um, that I have a limited perspective. But, but like you're saying, there's, it's not just all pain there. Like, there's so much beauty in learning. Uh, one of my. Favorite examples of this recently is, um, in the resistance to the Dakota access pipeline, uh, the Lakota people established a resistance movement and it was led by the indigenous people of the area. And there were lots of activists and other native people that came to help. And proportionately the, the local native people were a very small fraction at the end. Um, but everyone continued to function. under the guidance of that leadership and under that sovereignty. And I, it's such a [00:26:00] beautiful story that is just a fraction of what was going on there, but that, that sovereignty and that leadership and that respect that was able to function, I think for almost like 10 months in that space allowed for a much larger work to happen. And it's a beautiful example of how. Leadership and sovereignty is not, it doesn't have to be this dominating power, but it can be this community agreement to recognize leadership in these beautiful spaces and with indigenous values. And, um, it brings me so much hope. So I can, I can feel what you're saying about the resilience and the hope and the leadership and the learning that comes from engaging with these stories that also hold so much  Nina Simons: pain. Yeah. Well, and, and frankly, there is a, a fierce commitment to surviving and thriving in many Native communities. And [00:27:00] it's huge. You know, I, I recently heard a friend whose son was at Standing Rock, and she's a Native woman, and she said, I'm so grateful for what my son learned there because he learned that you don't ever put lives at risk without checking first with the life givers and the life bearers. So you go to the women first for their permission if you're going to consider something dangerous. And he, she said, I'm so grateful he learned that. You know, and it made so much sense to me. I thought, wow, what if before we went to war, you know, we had part of our constitution was a council of elder women. They would consult before going into war. It would change everything. Revolutionizing. Right?  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah. And in your book, you talk about, uh, the Iroquois Confederacy and the, uh, [00:28:00] The  Nina Simons: Haudenosaunee. Thank  Alyssa Calder Hulme: you. Yes, I read it. It's, it's weird to say it out loud. I'm not used to that. Um, Haudenosaunee and how they have that council of women. Yeah. And that is, you know, that was the inspiration for a lot of the, um, the feminist movement in the United States.  Nina Simons: And the U. S.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Constitution. Yes. And I, I have, I have, um, Iroquois ancestry and I'm so proud of that piece and I, it's, it's a very small fraction, but I'm like, ah, I want to connect with that part of, part of my ancestry as well because, oh my goodness, we have so much to learn. I have so much to learn. Um. Okay, so many things that we could, that we could talk about here. Um,  Nina Simons: You know what? Can I jump in for a sec? Oh, please do. Please do. Okay. I was realizing as I was anticipating being with you today that I was thinking about my own relationship to ambition. Oh, yeah. And, and what I [00:29:00] realized was that I've never had ambition to be rich or a celebrity. I've never had that kind of ambition. The kind of ambition that I have had has been a promise to myself that before I die, I'm going to live out what my soul brought me here to bring. And that's a form of ambition, I realized, you know, and certainly, you know, I enjoy being well used. I enjoy feeling like I've contributed something that's really Helped move something, um, that I care about and I work with a number of women who are quite ambitious and I love that they're ambitious because, you know, they're, they're sort of natural born competitors and, and. Why shouldn't we all have that within ourselves? You know, a [00:30:00] desire to excel. So I think, you know, part of what I talk about in the book is this idea that I call full spectrum leadership, and by which I mean, having access to all of our human capacities at any given time. And if the feminine is the receptive and the masculine is the active, why shouldn't we have all of it? I mean, of course, as whole human beings, that's my aspiration.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: No, I thank you for, for bringing us back to that, uh, cause I, I do want to explore that more. Um, one of the things I'm cautious of is engaging in a binary of, um, and it's ironic because you know, the name of the podcast is. Women of ambition. And so I'm engaging in that in, in a division by calling out experiences of women. Um, so I am cautious of that, but as you're saying, being holistic [00:31:00] people, exploring all pieces of our identity, making sure that's in balance, you know, it's not just women reclaiming femininity, but it's also men reclaiming that part of their leadership as well. And having that holistic experience. Um, Can you maybe speak a little more specifically about the different ways that, uh, feminine leadership comes across? I know there are so many examples in your book.  Nina Simons: Sure. You know, there's There's a phrase from the late 60s feminist movement. I don't remember which number it is, but I can hardly keep track. Are we in the fourth  Alyssa Calder Hulme: right now? I think that's  Nina Simons: what we're in right now. But, um, you know, feminist scholars started writing about all our ways of knowing. And reclaiming all our ways of knowing. And that phrase really [00:32:00] resonates for me. Um, what I've realized as I've explored my own self and cultivating myself to, to full flourishing, which is how I think of it. Um, and I hope I'm continuing to cultivate myself until the day I die, right? So that, that involves taking risks, being vulnerable. Um, what I find is that I almost have practices to turn down the volume on my mental capacities and turn up the volume of the knowing of my heart, of my emotions, of my body's Knowing and intelligence, and also of my intuitive or spiritual understanding and relationship to the sacred, to my ancestors, to the invisible world, you know, scientists are proving all the time that, uh, the invisible world [00:33:00] actually exists, and that in fact, it may have a far greater influence on events than the part that's visible and palpable to our five senses. So, so what I've found is that as I'm growing toward my full flourishing, and I should say all this self cultivation has led me to a place, Elisa, where I'm feeling more, um. authentic, more fully integrated, more free and more trusting of all of the parts of myself than I ever have in my life before. And I want that for everyone. It's just so wonderful to feel. And I, I look back and I think, well, I kind of wish I'd learned it sooner, but I'm not sure I could have, you know, so it, we'll each take whatever time we take. Um, Okay, what did you ask me? Ah, okay. Feminine leadership. So, you [00:34:00] know, what it looks like to me is recognizing that our emotions exist for good reason. Whether we're in a female body or a male body, emotions are communications from nature about something that we need to pay attention to. And in fact, of course, as we all know, in our culture, Hollywood produces movies that they call chick flicks that are all about relationship and emotion and men don't think those movies are for them. But I personally believe that if we could institute publicly acceptable, safe venues for expressing both grief and anger, we could Dial down the amount of violence in our culture almost overnight. I think it's just huge. So, you know, one of my favorite examples was a woman [00:35:00] at one of our, uh, trainings who was a labor organizer. And she described sitting at a table with a room full of men and how she was so passionate about something that she was crying. And she didn't apologize. She was the leader in the room. She didn't apologize. She spoke through her tears. She said, I'm weeping because I care so damn much. And they all really got it. And I thought, wow, what an incredible role model. Um, you know, and, and part of what, uh, we did on those retreats was to unpack the conventional forms of leadership where leaders, think they know the answer to everything, right? And, and to juxtapose it with new models of leadership where it's safe and okay to say, I don't know, does anyone have a better idea? Or does anyone have experience with this who can help inform us? I think we're all [00:36:00] moving toward much more shared, egalitarian, team based models of leadership. And that the more comfortable we can get with that within ourselves. So that we can see it as a, as a accomplishment, not as a failure to be sharing power. Um, the quicker and better we're going to transform our world. Yeah, I,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: I totally agree with you.  Nina Simons: That's beautiful. I mean, there's another thing that I would say too, is that, you know, Part of this all was ignited, uh, when I first saw a film online called The Burning Times, and I began to understand through that film and the research that I did, um, subsequent to that, that all of the systems of our society had transformed during this three to four hundred year period in European history that had correlatives all over the world. [00:37:00] And that everything associated with the feminine became devalued, and everything associated with the masculine became elevated. And, uh, and so for instance, you know, being embodied is a gift of the feminine. Um, literally we birth literally . Well, that's right. Exactly. Exactly. And how many men do you know who are comfortable in their own bodies? Yeah. You know? Um, so they can only feel anger. Well, how crazy is that? Yeah, right.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: They're very emotional. But it can only come through in one way. That's not healthy. .  Nina Simons: No, and especially not at a time when there's so much. Lost going on and so much pain and suffering. I mean, honestly, if you're not feeling grief, you're not paying attention. Um, because there is a lot of that going on and it's painful and real. Um, so, you [00:38:00] know, I think, I think that. Uh, freeing ourselves of the old conditioned mental models and then aspiring toward, you know, how can we embody our whole selves? How can our creative self become part of our leadership? How can our playful self become part of our leadership and how powerful that could be really to say, I don't know, what do you think? You know?  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah. I, I really appreciate that. Bye. Bye. humor can be one of those really transformational pieces. Um, I'm learning, I'm learning so much right now from, um, queer and trans people in terms of creation and joy and extravagance and flamboyance. Um, and, and same, especially with, uh, black feminist women, um, in their liberation movements and rest and healing and spirituality and wholeness and all [00:39:00] these textures of self that I. I might not even be aware of or might not even think about bringing forward in those places and, uh, we just, we need each other and, and as we're talking about these emotions and, and lack of touch with ourselves, um, you know, I think about the, the lack of our public ceremonies and, and morning processes and celebrations and these community experiences that we, um, That our people had long ago, or maybe we've lost in our current day. Um, and you talk a lot about the women that are bringing those kinds of ceremonies back and you talk about personal ceremonies. Um, can you speak maybe a little bit to that and how that. Works to integrate those parts of ourselves or or exercises them maybe I don't know. What do you think?  Nina Simons: Well, you know, I think what you're referring to. I refer to as [00:40:00] rituals and I Maybe 15 years ago or so. I was gifted to To experience a ceremony by a Peruvian teacher named Oscar Miro Quesada, and at the end of about an eight hour ceremony, he said, if you remember only one thing, remember this, consciousness creates matter, language creates reality. Ritual creates relationship and even though it was the wee hours of the morning, those words landed in me like, and I have used them to cultivate myself for now a long, long time and found them really helpful. And one of my favorite examples is just a really simple one where I realized one day that when I got out of the shower, I would look in the mirror. And I'd have all [00:41:00] these voices go off in my head about my hips being too wide, or my belly being too round, or my butt being, you know, all of those things, right? And I realized that each day I was doing violence to myself. And that I had to not only stop it, but replace it. And so I made up a ritual where I found a body oil that I really liked and, um, added essential oils to it until the scent really pleased me as a first thing in the morning kind of a thing. And so then I, you know, I held myself accountable for every day getting out of the shower and anointing my body with that oil. And while I did it. pouring love into my body and telling it what I was grateful for and what I appreciate about it and thanking it for all [00:42:00] the ways it supported me. And it, you know, it only took, takes two or three minutes a day. But what I found was that if I invent a ritual to strengthen some part of myself and hold myself really seriously accountable to doing it every day. Somewhere around six or eight weeks, I can feel a change in myself. And, um, so I find that really helpful, you know, and, um, similarly, I realized on our women's retreats that it made me nuts every time I heard somebody refer to a room full of women as guys. I was like, no, we are not guys. I'm a  Alyssa Calder Hulme: California girl. I am totally, I totally do that too. So I'm trying to change my language. It's hard. It's hard.  Nina Simons: Well, I'll tell you what helps. I love calling them guyas. I would be like, look, we're all Gaias, okay? Let's do [00:43:00] that.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: I like that. Because then you can change it mid word when you realize it's happening. Nina Simons: Exactly. And how wonderful to be addressed as a planet. Yeah.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: So is, have you, have you moved those rituals and things into? practices with other people. I can see that as being something that's really powerful in friendships or even in like a business setting or a collaboration space. What does that look  Nina Simons: like? Well, you know, a lot of what I talk about in the book is the power of women's circles. There are a lot of great authors who've written about this. Um, but the truth is you can do it. With one or two or five other women and, um, you know, there's a wonderful ritual that we do, we did in our retreats that we called compost and cauldron. Yes, I wanted to  Alyssa Calder Hulme: talk about that because I love the idea of compost rather than like throwing something away. So please. [00:44:00] Right.  Nina Simons: Okay. So basically the ritual is this. You observe each day. What do you want to let go of? What have you observed in yourself that you're ready to give back to the earth because it's no longer serving you? And it could be a self limiting idea. It could be. Uh, a habit that you have, you know, it could be anything, but it's something that you really want to ritually lay down to the earth and know that, like with compost, it becomes food for the earth. It's not waste, it's not trash, it just becomes food. And what you put in the cauldron is what you're cooking on for yourself. And so, you would go around the circle and each woman would say, I'm composting this. that I saw myself do when I compared myself to the woman who walked in the room. And I thought, Ooh, I have the wrong shoes. I'm not dressed right. I, I, I'm not nearly smart [00:45:00] enough compared to her, all those things. I'm composting that and I'm going to put in the cauldron how good I felt. When she appreciated my idea, right? I love that, yeah. I know. So, and what happens is that everyone in the circle benefits from it because we, you realize that these things that we have, so many of them are shared and so universal and it takes it out of the me and the individual and puts it more into the circle of we're all healing from this crazy culture that has given us a lot of conditioning. that doesn't serve our best interests, our best flourishing. And so when we do it together, it becomes more lighthearted. You know, we all can mirror each other. And I think the other thing that I found about working in circles with women is that often others can see us [00:46:00] much more clearly than we can see ourselves. And so it can be very helpful after you're working with somebody in a circle. That you know, or you know pretty well, and you can say to them, you know, when I do my own self assessment, what I notice is that, uh, A, B, and C are some of my strongest gifts or talents, but I don't know if you see me that way. How do you see me? What do you think are my strongest gifts or talents? And what do you think are my areas that I could be strengthening or, or, you know, where I should turn to another for help? Um. Because that's cultivation. That's an investment in each other's leadership. And it's so helpful.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: I love that. It's that vulnerability and practice, that humility that we were talking about.  Nina Simons: Yes,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: exactly. Investing in and lifting each other up. Um, Yeah, I, I think that's just another, [00:47:00] another kind of ambition to, to practice that when it, when it might feel so, um, unnatural initially.  Nina Simons: Well, I think, I think like anything, you know, it's a muscle that when we practice, it becomes stronger. And I think also just to tie it back to our earlier conversation in relation to racial justice, you know, it's very important that we as white women don't go to women of color and say, teach me, what's it like to be a person of color or what do I need to learn? Because that's a kind of, um, uncompensated emotional labor that white people tend to lay on the backs of people of color. And so it's really important that we educate ourselves. Both about the history of slavery and colonialism and racism in this country, but also, um, about [00:48:00] our own relationships to our ancestors. So we're not going to them saying, you know, here, fill up my culture cup with your culture. No, we have to have our own. Alyssa Calder Hulme: So that, that was one of the other things that I was thinking about as you're discussing this, um, because I know a lot of. A lot of white presenting people have been very separated from their indigenous cultures and practices and rituals. And so a lot of us are, are seeking them out and we can, um, we can appropriate from other cultures in ways that we might not, in our ignorance, might not realize are damaging, um, and then, and learn and change, but then also in kind of, Trying to create our own rituals, even if we don't realize we're adopting something from another culture, um, but then we can be educated and learn and grow. I think that's kind of my fear in that way is that I will in learning something that's helpful to my spirit and to. Um, learning and growing, then learn that I have [00:49:00] adopted that without permission from another culture unknowingly, um, is that just, do I just need to keep being humble and, and learning? Nina Simons: Well,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: it happens so inadvertently, you know what I mean? And it's genuine. And then the impact is so painful to others. And so I'm just grappling  Nina Simons: with that. You know, one of the things that I've learned from my contact with indigenous peoples is protocols are really important. And what that means is you don't borrow from another culture without citing the source. And so, if you learn something in a book, cite the author. If you learn something from a teacher, ask their permission before you share it again. Because there is something about honoring others sovereignty that is so central. To the dignity of people trying to heal from all these centuries of oppression. And it's when we do things [00:50:00] without citing the source, without asking permission, without honoring where it came from, that's when it's really cooptation.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah. Yeah. I thank you for that. I think part of my, my issue is I don't always realize that something comes from another culture. Yeah. And I guess at that point, all I can do is Ask for forgiveness and learn and adapt in the moment. Nina Simons: Ask for forgiveness if you hurt somebody. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Culture is a nebulous thing. And we learn from and with each other constantly. We are fundamentally social creatures. And, and culture is always evolving. So, you know, there is a way that that line is not nearly as as clearly drawn as some people would imagine. And so I think you just have to practice witnessing [00:51:00] yourself and being clear about your intentions. And, you know, one of the things I like to remind myself, Alisa, is that doing racial justice work as a white person means having both a thick skin and a thin skin at the same time. Yes, I agree. I love that because I want to open myself to really feel other people's experience and the truth of that and the pain of that. And at the same time, I want to have a thick enough skin that I recognize that when I make mistakes, it doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It means I have to. Pay attention and learn and apologize if it's appropriate, but it doesn't hurt me to make mistakes, really, you know, and, and so I think it's an art that we practice and get better at being thick skinned and thin skinned at the same time. Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah. And then, and then having you taking the privilege and the [00:52:00] position or whatever we have to actually go and act on that knowledge and, and help people. Cause we can't just learn something and crumple inward and not do anything about it and just feel guilt. Like that is not. That's not the point. And I also don't want to be, yeah. And I also don't want to be so scared of doing something wrong that I'm not engaging in reaching out and being vulnerable. So, I mean, it's a, it's a tricky balance, I think, but, um, you know, one of the things you talk about is. Engaging in community and in listening to one another and growing together and it's vulnerable, but that's I think that's part of that leaning into that feminine side that has been so undervalued for so long. Nina Simons: It's true. And I love that you mentioned earlier. That, um, you named rest as part of reclaiming the feminine and, you know, I have a teacher who taught me that spaciousness is where the feminine [00:53:00] flourishes. And I thought, huh, in this culture that is so focused on hyper productivity and, you know, how many of us have to do lists. that are way too long and don't give ourselves spaciousness, even for 10 minutes in the middle of the day to just chill and go quiet or sit, um, and be, be in spaciousness. I think that that's a vastly underrated, undervalued experience that, um, can help all of us who are ambitious and leaders and caring about flourishing into our best selves. Um, that's a practice that's worth cultivating and believing in because it also helps. Me to remember to value myself deeply, you know, not in a hallmark way not in a narcissistic way but in a like [00:54:00] I you know, this body is the instrument of my purpose my soul's purpose and Taking good care of it for the long haul is not selfish it's an act of leadership and one that I I hope we all do because we are living through an epidemic of burnout and um, that doesn't help anybody. It just perpetuates the, the dying system.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: I agree. Um, you know, I have three daughters and I, and you're talking about leadership and self care and you know, every time they walk in on me taking a bath or laying down and reading a book. Or painting or something that feeds my soul. It's like, I'm not doing it for show, but they see me and they will take my lead on those types of things. And every time, you know, I burn myself out, it goes that way too. So yeah. Um, yeah, I, I'm remembering now the, some of the rituals that I've created for [00:55:00] myself where when I'm menstruating, I. I slow down and I build in time and space to take a special bath with a special candle and, um, you know, Epsom salts or some things. But, uh, it's, it's been interesting for me to use my own body rhythms to remember that the world is not built for me. Every day is not the same. I'm on a cycle, engaging with the moon, engaging with the stars and being like, yeah, every day is not the same. I'm not a man, I don't have those hormones. And, you know, taking that time to reconnect. with that feminine side that's cyclical and changing is, is really beautiful.  Nina Simons: It is. And it's a beautiful capacity that women have to connect with earth cycles that way, you know? Yeah. So cool. It was very powerful to me to learn. That in many Native American [00:56:00] cultures, the tradition of banning women from sweat lodges when they are on their moon time did not come about because of any belief that the women were dirty. Quite to the contrary, it came about because of the belief that women on their moon time have a more direct connection to the sacred. So there you have it. Yeah, I,  Alyssa Calder Hulme: I have, I have indigenous friends that have been, um, leading and teaching me in some really beautiful ways. And they continue to emphasize that to me and talk about how in their society, women don't need the sweat lodge because they have their own ceremony. It's an excess. It's an extra, but the men. require it because they don't have that in their, in their biology. And, you know, I, it's such an interesting thing to learn about and I'm still just scratching the surface on that, but that's been part of my, my [00:57:00] coming back to self ritual, because then it does allow me to do all the many other. Outward things that I want to do, but yeah, you know, we have to have balance across all parts of ourself. Yep  Nina Simons: Yes, we do  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Okay, well we are gonna wrap up here, but thank you so much for for coming on and sharing these things just a Beautiful, gorgeous book. I can't wait for other people to read it and to share it even more. Um, is there anything in closing that you want to share with listeners, with ambitious women?  Nina Simons: Well, I would say, um, That it's worth checking out Bioneers because the role models there are amazing and the conversations are amazing. Um, the URL that's kind of great is bioneers. org slash NCS book because then you can download a free copy of [00:58:00] the introduction to the book. And. Um, if anyone does do that and does read the book, I would ask humbly that you put a review on Amazon because they count and they're hard to get. And I'm very honored to be offering this book to the world and to your listeners, Elisa, and, and thank you so much. What a treat to be with you.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah, you're very welcome. Um, is Bioneers still, do you still do in person conferences?  Nina Simons: We do once a year, um, in the Bay Area in Berkeley, uh, in late, uh, March of next year. And we also have a great newsletter and radio series. And that's free to any station and, um, just a lot of great resources online. So it's very much worth, and I'll be teaching actually an online course in August on sacred activism. So if [00:59:00] that's of interest, then sign up for the Bioneers newsletter and you'll hear all about it.  Alyssa Calder Hulme: Okay, good. Yeah. I, I really want to go to the March conference. Um, I'm going to be in grad school next year, so I'm not sure how busy I'm going to be, but. How great. Yeah. Well, and I, I'm trying to, I would love to, I'm in sociology and I'd really love to work with nonprofits and grassroots efforts and especially women, um, and gender equity and things like that. So it's all very, very close to home for me. It's very exciting.  Nina Simons: That's so  Alyssa Calder Hulme: great. Well, I love hearing about these resources. So thank you so much. Um, and yeah, we'll point people to your book and to your website and they'll get to check you out there. Thank you so much for being on the show, Nina.  Nina Simons: Thank you, Elisa.

Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership with Nina Simons In Nature, Culture, and the Sacred 2nd Edition, Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons offers inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership, one replete with resilience and joy. Informed by a plethora of multicultural and Indigenous wisdom keepers who are leading ways towards a regenerative future, this guide takes readers on an inspirational journey that's both visionary and practical. It speaks to shedding self-limiting beliefs, leading from the heart, and discovering beloved communities as they cultivate their own flourishing and liberation. Nina is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about reinventing leadership, restoring the feminine, and co-creating a healthy, peaceful, and equitable world for all. She speaks and teaches internationally at schools, conferences, and festivals, and co-facilitates transformative workshops and retreats for women that share practices for regenerative leadership through reclaiming wholeness and relational mindfulness. For more information, please see her website, www.ninasimons.com *************************************************** For more information about BITEradio products and services visit: http://www.biteradio.me/index.html To view the photography of Robert at: http://rpsharpe.com/

"Consciousness creates matter,Language Creates Reality,Ritual creates relationship' - Oscar Miro-Quesada  quoted by Nina Simons in her book 'Nature, Culture and the Sacred' One of the extraordinary privileges of hosting a podcast like this is that I get to talk to some of my heroes, to ask questions, to have a conversation about the things that really matter.  This week's guest is one of these.  Nina Simons is an author, a leader - and we'll hear how that word was imposed on her and then she learned to embody it, she's a visionary in the deepest sense, and I would say, in a world that is crying out for the wisdom of elders, she is an elder, a wisdom-bearer, someone who has brought deep humility and authenticity to the whole of her life.  In more outward terms, in 1990, she co-founded Bioneers, which started off as a conference and has grown into one of the foremost trailblazers of the movement for a whole and healed earth. On the website it says 'We act as a fertile hub of social and scientific  innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.' Nina is also a writer. She's a co-author of 'MoonRise: the Power of Women Leading from the Heart' and then more recently, she wrote Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, which is the kind of book that opens new doors, it's got the crackle of authenticity and the deep wisdom of someone who really does listen, to the earth, to other elders, to her own body, who has the capacity to walk the earth, asking, 'what wants to come through me?' without presuming to know the answer and then the integrity to write what comes.  And what came in that particular walk was this: "This is no time for small talk. This is a time for mythmaking. This is a time for epic poetry. This is a time to tell the tales that will become our compass for the days ahead. " So, with this as our guiding light, please enjoy the conversation. Nina's website https://www.ninasimons.com/Bioneer's website https://bioneers.org/Nature Culture and the Sacred (Introduction is available for Free Download here) https://bioneers.org/ncs/Bioneers Learning https://www.bioneerslearning.org/Bioneers You Tube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@bioneersNina on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ninasimonsauthorNina on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-simons/Nina on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/1ninasimons/The Burning Times Film https://youtu.be/34ow_kNnoro

In this episode we talk about getting the most out of your woodstove - cooking, baking, hot water, and more. Ben compares rocket mass heaters and masonry stoves to high-efficiency wood stoves, and shares why he uses a wood stove, how he cuts all the wood he needs for a year, manages his woodlot, and shares some wisdom gleaned from over two decades of permaculture homesteading. Check out Ben's workshop on wood stoves here: 2023 Wood Heating Intensive — Whole Systems Design And the new edition of his book The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design can be found where ever books are sold! Ben developed Whole Systems Design, LLC as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben's integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont's Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the regenerative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds a master's degree in land-use planning and design. He has conducted more than 650 site development and land inspection consultations across the US and abroad, and has facilitated dozens of courses on property selection, permaculture design, and resilient systems. He has given keynote addresses and presented dozens of workshops at venues ranging from Bioneers to the Omega Institute. Ben is the author of the award-winning book The Resilient Farm and Homestead (Chelsea Green, 2013) and serves as an Advisory Council for the international regeneration group Ecosystem Restoration Camps. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/plantcunning/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/plantcunning/support

In this episode of Money Tales, our guests are Lynne Twist and Sara Vetter. Lynne and Sara call themselves “work wives” who run the Soul of Money Institute and the Pachamama Alliance. They observe that society perpetuates the myth of scarcity—insisting there's never enough time, money, love, or fulfillment. Lynne and Sara work each day to challenge that automatic and unconscious assumption. In our conversation, they unpack the implications of living in a society where the economy often takes precedence over ecology. Lynne Twist is the founder of the Soul of Money Institute and author of the best-selling, award winning book "The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life”, and her newest book, “Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself”. Over the past 40 years Lynne has worked with over 100,000 people in 50 countries in the arenas of fundraising with integrity, conscious philanthropy, strategic visioning and having a healthy relationship with money. Her clients include Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, the International Unity Church, Charles Schwab, United Way, The National Black theater of Harlem, Harvard University and others. A sought-after speaker, she has presented for the United Nations Beijing Women's Conference, State of the World Forum, Synthesis Dialogues with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Governor's Conference on California Women, among others. A recognized global visionary, Lynne has been an advisor to the Desmond Tutu Foundation, and The Nobel Women's Initiative. Lynne is the recipient of numerous prestigious honors, including the "Woman of Distinction" award from the United Nations. Lynne is a co-founder of The Pachamama Alliance — a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest to preserve their lands and culture. In addition, Lynne serves on a number of nonprofit boards including the Fetzer Institute, The Institute of Noetic Sciences, Bioneers, Conscious Capitalism and Women's Earth Alliance. From working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta to the refugee camps in Ethiopia and the threatened rainforests of the Amazon, Lynne's on-the-ground work has brought her a deep understanding of the social tapestry of the world and the historical landscape of the times we are living in. Sara Vetter is the Business Development Director of the Soul of Money Institute and is a coach, consultant, workshop leader, keynote speaker and strategist. She is also the Major Gift Fundraiser for the Pachamama Alliance. Sara has had experience in advertising, marketing and sales with several magazines including LA Magazine and the Disney Channel. Sara has been coaching, consulting and leading workshops with SOMI Author and Founder Lynne Twist since 2001. She has become a key player in all the initiatives of the institute. Her leadership doubled business revenues in recent years and also significantly expanded revenue for Pachamama Alliance. Sara is an experienced SOMI facilitator of workshops, fundraisers, journeys and retreats. She also leads several of the Pachamama Alliance Transformational Educational programs. Sara has played a leadership role with the Nobel Women's Initiative, she has co-led delegations to Dharamsala, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Liberia. As the major gift fundraiser for the Pachamama Alliance, Sara has led and participated in more than 19 delegations and immersion trips to the Amazon Rainforest. She has raised millions of dollars for the Pachamama Alliance and the Nobel Women's Initiative and is a consummate fundraiser.

Welcome back to the Mother Tree Network! In today's episode, we have the incredible Nina Simons joining us to share her wisdom, experiences, and insights.Nina starts off by discussing her unique practice of creating an altar around a tree to protect her New Mexico home from wildfires, which led her to deepen her relationship with the land and feel a sense of sacredness. “And there was a huge wildfire, the biggest in New Mexico's history.   I reached out to a friend and she said:. Make an altar around a tree that you love. And that became my practice. Putting flowers around the base of the tree and feeding it with water and sometimes with wine and with prayer.  And sending the prayer down into its roots and up into its branches. Nina then dives into her book "Nature, Culture, and the Sacred," focusing on women's leadership and racial equity and justice.She passionately emphasizes the importance of strengthening the feminine within everyone, not just women, as the repression of the feminine has had a profound impact on society as a whole. Together, Aminata and Nina explore the significance of diverse leadership and racial equity, discussing the challenges and lessons learned from convening diverse groups. They delve into the importance of creating safe spaces, discomfort resilience, and the need for love and acceptance in racial justice work. Cultural humility is also a key concept highlighted, acknowledging the embedded white supremacy and implicit bias that exist in society.Nina shares her personal experiences with cultural humility, the conflict in Israel and Palestine, and the importance of listening with the heart. But the wisdom doesn't stop there. Nina shares her profound experience with a plant mentor, Apache Plume, and the lessons she learned about revealing beauty, camouflage, fertility, and growing in community. The conversation takes a personal turn as Nina discusses her transformative process in her 60s, recognizing her white privilege and conditioning, and the importance of slowing down and making deliberate choices.Nina's deep connection with nature and its capacity to heal and regenerate shines through as she shares her journey of finding solace and stability in nature. This episode is filled with deep wisdom, personal experiences, and a call to honor the feminine in ourselves and the world. You can learn with Nina by checking out her Every Woman's Leadership online class in 2024.  https://www.bioneerslearning.org/everywomans-leadership-nina-simonsNina's BioNINA SIMONS is Co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer at Bioneers, and leads itsEverywoman's Leadership program. Throughout her career spanning the nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, corporate, and philanthropic sectors, Nina has worked with nearly a thousand diverse women leaders across disciplines, race, class, age and orientation to create conditions for mutual learning, trust and leadership development. Support the showMother tree Network Podcast--Where Spirituality and Earth Wisdom Meet Racial Justice and Women's Leadership. Want to become your unlimited self and evolve the planet?Go here to get the Mother Tree podcast + Show Notes sent to your inbox https://www.dramandakemp.com/podcast

Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more Democracy in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and Democratic Transformation The first major book to deal with the dual crises of democracy and climate change as one interrelated threat to the human future and to identify a path forward. Democracy in a Hotter Time calls for reforming democratic institutions as a prerequisite for avoiding climate chaos and adapting governance to how Earth works as a physical system. To survive in the “long emergency” ahead, we must reform and strengthen democratic institutions, making them assets rather than liabilities. Edited by David W. Orr, this vital collection of essays proposes a new political order that will not only help humanity survive but also enable us to thrive in the transition to a post–fossil fuel world. Orr gathers leading scholars, public intellectuals, and political leaders to address the many problems confronting our current political systems. Few other books have taken a systems view of the effects of a rapidly destabilizing climate on our laws and governance or offered such a diversity of solutions. These thoughtful and incisive essays cover subjects from Constitutional reform to participatory urban design to education; together, they aim to invigorate the conversation about the human future in practical ways that will improve the effectiveness of democratic institutions and lay the foundation for a more durable and just democracy. Contributors William J. Barber III, JD, William S. Becker, Holly Jean Buck, Stan Cox, Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, Ann Florini, David H. Guston, Katrina Kuh, Gordon LaForge, Hélène Landemore, Frances Moore Lappé, Daniel Lindvall, Richard Louv, James R. May, Frederick W. Mayer, Bill McKibben, Michael Oppenheimer, David W. Orr, Wellington Reiter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Anne-Marie Slaughter Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics emeritus (1990-2017), Counselor to the President, Oberlin College 2007-2017, and presently a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward (Yale University Press, 2017), Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009), Design with Nature (Oxford, 2002), Earth in Mind (Island, 2004) and co-editor of four others including Democracy Unchained (The New Press, 2020). He was a regular columnist for Conservation biology for twenty years. He has also written over 250 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. He has served as a board member or adviser to eight foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and the Bioneers. Currently, he is a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado and Children and Nature Network. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, a “Visionary Leadership Award” from Second Nature, a National Leadership award from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education, the 2018 Leadership Award from the American Renewable Energy Institute, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Green Energy Ohio. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He is a founder of: the Atlanta Environmental Symposium (1972-1974), the Meadowcreek Project (1979-1990), the Oberlin Project (2007-2017), the journal Solutions, and of the State of American Democracy Project 2017-present). He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years;” . . . “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and selected as one of “52 game changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design + Construction Magazine  (2016). He was instrumental in the design and funding for the Platinum-rated Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center (hotel + conference center). His current work at Arizona State University is on the repair and strengthening American democracy Pete on YouTube Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” (Bertolt Brecht). John Densmore, legendary drummer of the Doors, joins visionary spoken word duo Climbing PoeTree in an exploration of creativity and social change. This episode of the Bioneers features exclusive interviews with the artists and a special Bioneers performance of Jim Morrison's poem, “American Prayer”.