The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
214. A Life's Wisdom, Transformation & Romance: With legendary Bioneers founders Nina Simons & Kenny Ausubel
This treasured and unique conversation is with the legendary founders of Bioneers, Nina Simons and Kenny Ausubel. Bioneers is a cultural phenomenon - an innovative nonprofit organization that has been highlighting breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet - for 34 years. What started as a somewhat reluctant conference in 1990 has become all sorts of other notable projects, including Bioneers Learning, and Bioneers radio and podcast. And there’s yet more to come.
Nina and Kenny also continue to be award-winning authors and filmmakers. You might even recognise Kenny from an appearance in Leonardo DiCaprio’s feature documentary The 11th Hour, for which he was also a central advisor. And when Nina’s new book landed on my desk last year, it doubled my hopes to meet them both when we reached their town. The book, ‘Nature, Culture, and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership’, is in many ways, the culmination of Nina’s life’s work to date. We hear more about this and other culminating and transformative moments in their lives here – from the ‘mystery’ illness that nearly claimed Kenny’s life as a teen (that Western medicine had no answer for), to Nina’s walk through a Puebloan garden soon after the couple met.
This was a very personal, at times riotous, and often revelatory wander through their life stories, with a literally thunderous finale. (Listen for the interplay of that storm towards the end!) It was an honour and joy to sit with them around the kitchen table of their beautiful adobe home in the mountains outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, for this rare public conversation with Nina and Kenny, together.
This episode has chapter markers and a transcript, if you’d like to navigate the conversation that way (available on most apps now too).
Recorded 20 June 2024.
Title slide: Kenny, Nina & AJ (pic: Olivia Cheng).
To see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.
Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from Regenerating Australia.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests (thanks to Josie Symons).
Find More:
A favourite episode on the Bioneers podcast: Undam the Klamath! How Tribes Led the Largest River Restoration Project in US History.
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G' day. My name's Anthony James and this is The RegenNarration, ad-free, freely available and entirely supported by listeners. So thanks a lot, Elliott Perkins and Sasha Menendez for becoming very generous subscribing members, and to my dear friend Lucci for doubling your subscription. To friends old and new, I'm so very grateful. If you're also finding value in all this, please join Elliott, Sasha and Lucci part of a great community of supporting listeners and if you'd like to become a subscribing member, you can get exclusive access to behind the scenes stuff from me tips, news, chat space and more. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration. com forward slash support and thanks again.
Kenny:In 1990, the first Bioneers conference. You could count the number of people in the of really leaders in the agricultural field on two hands.
AJ:There you go.
Kenny:Probably on one hand, frankly, now we can't even keep up. I mean, we have a whole team of people, we have a hard time keeping up, so there's a huge proliferation of all this work. It's much, much more widespread. We've seen some of this stuff start to really go mainstream for real, like regenerative agriculture.
AJ:Welcome back to Paradise Valley in Montana, aside the running waters of Pine Creek, heading for the incredible Yellowstone River. This week, a treasured and unique conversation with the legendary founders of Bioneers, Nina Simons and Kenny Ausubel. Bioneers is a cultural phenomenon, an innovative non-profit organisation that has been highlighting breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet for 34 years. What started as a somewhat reluctant conference in 1990 has become all sorts of other notable projects, including Bioneers Learning and Bioneers Radio and Podcast, and there's yet more to come. Nina and Kenny also continue to be award-winning authors and filmmakers. You might even recognise Kenny from an appearance in Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary the Eleventh Hour, for which he was also a central advisor. And when Nina's new book landed on my desk last year, it doubled my hopes to meet them both when we reached their town.
AJ:The book Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, is in many ways the culmination of Nina's life's work to date. We hear more about this and other culminating and transformative moments in their lives here, from the mystery illness that nearly claimed Kenny's life as a teen (that Western medicine had no answer for), to Nina's walk through a Puebloan garden soon after the couple met. This was a very personal, at times riotous, and often revelatory wander through their life stories - with a literally thunderous finale. Listen for the interplay of that storm towards the end. N ina and Kenny formed a partnership that continues to change the world and inspire us next generations. Any wonder nature had something to say about it. It was an honour and joy to sit with them around the kitchen table of their beautiful adobe home in the mountains outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, for this rare public conversation with Nina and Kenny together.
Nina:We both were born and grew up in New York City, and so this is a very different environment than we were raised with, and we adore it and feel insanely lucky to get to live here. It's a land of many different ecosystems and many different cultures, and as such, it's different than almost any other place in the US. I think it has a deep quality of having been lived on and in relationship to for thousands of years actually, and so we live in a place that really is the unceded territory of the Pueblo peoples and the Apache as well, and we live at the edge of a national forest in the high mountain desert region. What would you say, kenny?
Kenny:Yeah, I mean, when I left the East Coast when I was in my early 20s, I was really done with New York and the East Coast altogether, landed briefly on the West Coast but just didn't want to be. I didn't really care for it and didn't want to be in a city, and a friend of mine said you should check out the southwest. So my first wife and I just got in the car and you know, when we got to santa fe, where she had a cousin, it was just this immediate, somatic experience of belonging. This is like my place and I love the high desert, I love the mountains, um and it's. You know, new Mexico is famous for being tricultural. The Hispanic population here is actually, in northern New Mexico, largely descendants of the conquistadores, who were, of course, the wretched refuse of Europe you know who were indentured servants or criminals, or you know, to get, they had to get out of Spain and Portugal quick.
Kenny:So and then the tribes, who, for the most part in New Mexico, were never displaced from their land. So, as Nina was saying, there's a continuum here, but it's just a feeling. I mean, you know, place is so subjective and everybody has a different affinity. And it just was magic to me, and I love the multicultural. Having come from New York City, I couldn't handle a place like well, I won't name names.
AJ:I thought we were going to get juicy, but I relate to you. I mean, it's part of the magic of this place that we're feeling in a short time and, to be honest, have felt a sense of for decades, from afar as much because of the ancient cultures, yeah, and to visit some of these places, some of the ancient cities carry such a power, and then to learn the mixed histories, like that, some were vacated post-colonial arrival of the sp, some were vacated prior to that and seemingly adjusting to climatic situations, going high, coming low, down to riverbeds, back up from riverbeds, this sort of thing. It made me wonder, though I expect similarly there's been a lot of you know, amongst that tri-cultural context, which we are loving too, that I imagine there's a decent whack of pain and trauma, with the clashes over the journey too. Is that a feeling that's present, really sort of visceral, around here as well, or it feels like it's transcended it somewhat?
Kenny:Oh no, that's definitely present. I mean, New Mexico is complicated by other factors, including Los Alamos. Labs being here, you know that's a whole other element. And there is actually a fourth culture who came in the 60s, which is the hippies.
AJ:You don't count yourself amongst them, though?
Kenny:I gather Not really, but I could have been years ago, I wouldn't have called myself that, but other people did call me that oh yeah, but you know, at the time this was 1973, 74, 74 actually Santa Fe was largely a Hispanic town.
Kenny:People used to actually ask me who were, you know, out of state friends who were thinking of visiting, if they needed a passport to come to New Mexico. Literally it was off the map. Pretty much there was no economic motive for coming here. It was a you know, and they're also been a very long time artistic community, beginning in the twenties, and Taos is very famous, of course, in that way, and so basically the tribes were very segregated from the at large. When I first moved here they really kept to themselves. The town itself was very Hispanic. There's an annual ceremony or celebration called Fiestas, which was a Spanish thing, that included the burning of Zazobra themselves. The town itself was very Hispanic. There's an annual ceremony or celebration called Fiestas, which was a Spanish thing, that included the burning of Zazobra, which is the original Burning man.
Kenny:That's actually where they probably got that idea. It's pretty much the same thing burning old man gloom, but as an Anglo you came here on your knees at that time and you were a minority. But what's happened over time, among other things, is a lot of the history has come forth and some of the political culture has shifted. Slavery was widespread here as well, native Americans also. There was a lot of intermingling of Native and Hispanic and that makes it even more complicated the history. So a lot of that stuff has been surfaced and people are kind of processing that and dealing with that. And then you know, the bigger ticket item is just so many outsiders coming in and now the economics changing, which is not good for most people, for the most part the sort of one percentification of certain areas, and that's rough.
AJ:Now it is a place to come, it seems.
Kenny:Yeah, yeah yeah, oh, very much so, yeah, so, and with covid, a lot of people fleeing the coasts who could afford to do remote work or you know that type of thing. So, but yeah, no, I think you know there are certainly very real tensions, um, and at the same time there's also much more connection there than there was when I first moved here. Interesting, there's also complexity in connection than there was when I first moved here Interesting.
Nina:There's also complexity in terms of the economic makeup of this state, in that a lot of our funding that goes to support schools and communities comes from oil and gas drilling in the southern part of the state.
Kenny:The Permian Basin.
Nina:Right, the Permian Basin. So we have this state that, on the one hand, is economically dependent on that, but also is one of the greatest states you could ever look for for solar. So you know it's an opportunity to sort of become a model as we seek to navigate that transition.
AJ:You could say there's very similar things about Western Australia too, and a lot of us feel the same way. It's fair to say the systems are a bit intransigent but there's certainly a building of that critical mass. But you know New.
Kenny:Mexico is also physically, geographically, a very large state. Yeah, so we're really talking. Where we live is northern New Mexico, that's right, and that has this kind of historical heritage, and from Albuquerque to the south, you know, it's on the border with Mexico and so it's much more Mexican, chicano, mexican-american, etc. And then eastern New Mexico was formerly basically cowboys and then, of course, oil and gas, so it's much more like Texas, actually eastern New Mexico. So you've got a lot of, you know, diversity there geographically. I hear you.
AJ:So, nina for you. When did you guys connect? How did you meet and how did you? I gather it was how you came to be in New Mexico as well, or did you come already?
Nina:No, I came separately.
AJ:Really.
Nina:Yeah, I came about 10 years after Kenny and I came here to visit my mother who had moved here with a boyfriend in a VW bus. That tells you something about my mother, but I had been long estranged from my mother and I came to visit her and I just thought the people who lived here were the luckiest people I'd ever seen. You know, and I remember going to a huge outdoor festival at a sculpture garden. That was fantastic and it just you know, it's sunny over 300 days a year here, so it was.
Nina:It enchanted me, and, and it wasn't until a few years later that I met Kenny and how did that happen?
Nina:Well, I was managing a restaurant that was an ahead-of-its-time vegetarian gourmet restaurant and Kenny was frequenting as a guest and I kind of had my eye on him and I had been praying to meet somebody who was a better match for me than the people I had been previously attracted to and I got very curious about him previously attracted to, and I got very curious about him. And then one day I was at a dear friend's house and she told me that Kenny was coming for dinner and I said, oh, can I stay? And she said, sure, we're just friends, of course. And Kenny came and after I don't know a half hour she interrupted us and she said can you two slow, slow down, because I'm from Oklahoma and I can barely understand a word.
AJ:You're saying the New York, kick in here Exactly, so we met there and and the rest is history.
Nina:We started working together very, very quickly.
AJ:Yeah, it's worth backing up a bit, I think, particularly for those who don't know your story, to I guess, part of what led you here, kenny the broader backdrop in your teens of the illness that transformed your life. How would you reflect on that today in terms of how it shaped your path over the succeeding decades?
Kenny:Well, the illness was, in many ways, the determining factor of my life actually, and I was really ill, I actually thought I was going to die for a bunch of years and knew that I needed to get out of the city and ultimately get back to the land and I was incredibly fortunate to discover this place and about a year, year and a half, after my first wife and I had moved to Santa Fe, we got a small farm north of Santa Fe in one of the traditional Spanish villages and we were, I think, among a half dozen Anglo families, among about 5,000 Spanish folks, and took seriously the farming. We had just a very small place like an acre and a half with 40 fruit trees and a fairly large quarter acre kitchen garden and took it seriously and I knew I needed to rebuild my health and I had sort of fallen through the rabbit hole, since the doctors were not able to help me at all, into the world of natural medicine, which saved my life has continued to save my life.
AJ:Can you elaborate on that? Where did that hole present itself on that journey?
Kenny:Well, actually I had some kind of central nervous system damage and toxic event that I didn't really know what happened. Still don't actually.
AJ:Yeah, amazing.
Kenny:And while I was still in New York City, the last year I was there, I guess, which was around 73, the docs couldn't do anything for me. It was hopeless and James Reston, who wrote for the New York Times, had been in China and had appendicitis and ended up getting acupuncture in China and wrote a piece for the Times and that was the seminal thing that actually opened the door on acupuncture in the US and I learned about it and I was literally preparing to go underground in Chinatown where people practice it because it was illegal when suddenly it was legalized and it turned out there was a practitioner right next to my parents apartment in New York Japanese, and that was how I started and then I picked it back up. When I got here there was a great acupuncturist, santa Fe at the time, and obviously diet, and you know and you know the body work. There are all kinds of different therapies.
AJ:Yeah, so one thing led to another sort of from there.
Kenny:Yeah, really interesting. But you know, it's something we talk about in relation to Bioneers because, at the core of the project, capital P, it's really about healing, ultimately, and personal health, our physical health, is entirely dependent on our environment. I mean, hello, it's so basic. Where do you, we, even have to say this?
AJ:you know we still do. Yeah, we are the earth.
Kenny:You know, wake, wake up. So, um. So you know that that was very formative and that ended up. I ended up um, deciding to after I, over period of years, I regained enough of my health that I could function again and then realized I have to do something, I mean, figure out what I want to do with my life. And I felt like I wanted to give something back in that regard in terms of what I've learned about health and healing. And I'll make this a very short story.
Kenny:But around that time, very unexpectedly, out of the blue, my father, who was 56 years old, got cancer and was dead within six months, and it was a huge shock. And then, just during that period, in the mail, unbidden, I got this newsletter about an unconventional cancer treatment. It was actually an enzyme-related treatment that was getting actual remissions and I was frankly angry. I thought it was really outrageous and incredibly irresponsible to put that kind of information out, but I decided, if there's anything at all to it, I wanted to learn more and that's part of where I really went through.
Kenny:The rabbit hole was into that whole world and the world of medical politics and the economics and the corporatization of medicine and on down the line, medical politics and the economics and the corporatization of medicine, and you know, on down the line and the hoxie treatment in particular, that I ended up, I just I came across the story of the wildest story in medicine the hoxie cancer treatment. That actually was big in australia for a number of years. Is that right? There were doctors there who practiced it? Yeah, but it's an herbal, herbally based formula. That, um, and it's a much longer story that we won't get into now.
AJ:Yes, you've written a book on it.
Kenny:I wrote a book and a movie, but it really goes much more deeply into the paradigm clash of allopathic, or what we call conventional medicine versus empiric medicine or natural medicine. And the basic idea of allopathic medicine is that the body is not really capable of healing itself and as the practitioner you would need to intervene, often quote heroically, for example, when they used to administer mercury for syphilis.
Nina:Chemotherapy frankly in many cases.
Kenny:It's that you hope to kill the cancer before you kill the patient, and it's a kind of brutalist approach. Don't get me wrong. I'm very grateful for Western medicine. There are all kinds of things that it does really well, but philosophically it's based on this Interventionist, you know, very aggressive Mentality, whereas natural medicine is it's the philosophy of vitalism. The nature has a profound capacity for healing and your job as a healer is to basically support the body to heal itself, and there are all kinds of ways to do that, using nature's own recipes and processes. So that really opened up for me all the kind of work that we now do with Bioneers as well.
Kenny:It is ultimately about the remarkable capacity of nature for self-repair and self-healing, and learning to work with nature to help nature heal and ourselves with it.
AJ:And there is the worldview shift, the paradigm shift in a nutshell, which of course could almost segue straight to your book, nina, on that. But let's not. I want to hold that a little bit because I want to move somewhat sequentially into the Bioneers days, because I guess it's not too long after then that you met and that you got back on your feet, so to speak, that you started Bioneers. Is that right to?
Kenny:complete the feature-length documentary about the Hoxie treatment and he had been working on it for several years and was close to completion and to complete burnout and to complete, burnout you too.
Nina:And what happened for me was that I would spend time at his house and people would call at all hours of the day and night who had just been diagnosed with cancer and they had heard through the grapevine about this guy in Santa Fe who knew something about alternatives and I was just so moved by talking to these people.
Nina:You know I learned very quickly what I could and couldn't say, but you know it was a very powerful thing. So we wound up finishing the film together and then promoting it and on and then after that really was Seeds of Change. Do you want to tell that story?
Kenny:Sure. So, yeah, what Nina's saying, we actually met and I think you've said you were very moved by the kind of activism of the film, because it's really about medical politics and kind of the central theme of the film ultimately politically is why don't we have freedom of medical choice? Sure, particularly with the terminal illness where it's not like there's a surefire cure for it, okay, yeah, or there may be very serious philosophical differences about what's helpful. And so when I was making the film because it's an herbally based treatment I did a huge amount of research about botanical medicine and ended up meeting the co-author of a very famous book at that time the Secret Life of Plants.
Kenny:Christopher Byrd and you know if I thought what I was doing was controversial the idea that these herbs can cure cancer he was saying well, plants have consciousness and sentience and they know what color you're wearing. So we became friends and Chris called me up one day and said can you go make a little film about this Indian pueblo near Santa Fe and it was a paying gig about some kind of an agricultural technology. And I said sure. And it was there that I met this guy, gabriel Howarth, who is a master organic gardener and seed collector, who had been a student of Alan Chadwick, the biodynamic progenitor, and Chadwick had told his students if you really want to learn about agriculture, go study with native peoples. They've been doing it forever and they know the most. So Gabriel did that and in the course of his apprenticeships, basically as people came to trust him, they shared with him the most precious of gifts for them, which was the gift of seeds, because through the seeds speak the voices of the ancestors and in turn, as you plant a seed, you become an ancestor for future generations. So he had this remarkable seed collection and had stuck it in the ground at San Juan Pueblo. Literally dozens and dozens or hundreds of varieties of tomatoes, some of the first quinoa and amaranth in North America, herbs that no one had ever heard of, frankly, and on and on and on.
Kenny:And I was. You know, I lived on this small farm for a number of years up in Chimayo, but I mean, this was a whole other world of biodiversity in the garden. It blew my mind completely. So when I was finishing the film, gabriel approached me whether I would help him raise money, because as a filmmaker you're not an independent filmmaker, you're dependent on money, not independent at all. And so he wanted to start like a big farm and health center and I said it didn't really interest me, frankly, but the seeds, what about the seeds? So I was in the process. I was actually in Nina's kitchen writing the business plan for a seed company, and Nina comes, among other things, from a show business background, having worked in theater and film and arts and communications, and she thought she'd landed a filmmaker. What do you got a farm. She was quite disappointed, I think, wavering, about this relationship, and then I took her down to the farm in southern New Mexico and and I was given a tour through Gabriel's garden and it was the most beautiful garden I'd ever seen.
Nina:It was just resplendent with colors and shapes and smells and pollinators. And as we walked through the garden, gabriel would introduce us to each plant, and he would introduce us by the Latin name and by the common name, and then he would explain how it was related to all the plants around it. And I began to realize that this man knew these plants better than many people know their own families, you know. And then he invited us to taste, as we walked through the garden, and so you know, these incredible tomatoes, warmed by the midday sun, that just burst in your mouth, like you know, tasting like nothing you'd ever tasted.
Kenny:You haven't actually tasted real corn.
Nina:Probably You've tasted some of the heirlooms, right and herbs like lemon, licorice, mint and chocolate basil, and it was my senses were just dancing. And then he started to explain to us why it was so important that he was growing this biodiversity garden and how many of the mom and pop seed companies that had for hundreds of years, like passed down generations of seeds, were getting acquired by multinational corporations, and how the diversity of food plants was actually shrinking and was terribly dangerous. And by the time we walked out of that garden I felt like the spirit of the natural world just tapped me on the shoulder and said you're working for me now. And I was flabbergasted because I had no background in gardening or farming or seeds, none of that. But it was really unmistakable, and so she was a great.
Kenny:She thought she was working for Mother Nature, but she was working for me, so I hired her. So you did. She thought she was working for Mother.
Nina:Nature, but she was working for me.
AJ:So no, I hired her. You hired her With no budget.
Kenny:No, we raised money and got it going in 89, actually 88.
AJ:Yeah.
Kenny:Yeah, and you know, during the 80s, 70s and 80s really through my own personal health journey initially, but also having come of age in the 60s um, you know, by the end of the 60s, early 70s, anybody who's paying attention could see we were on a collision course with the natural world and earth day and all the rest of it and um. So I wanted to know, I didn't want to sit there sort of doom and gloom and shivering in the dark, you know, dreading what's to come. And so I just started, started to try to learn are there any actual, real solutions out there? And one by one, by one, I began to come across all these different people doing all these different things and basically the central organizing principle was they had looked to nature not as a resource but as a source, as mentor, metric and model. How does nature do it?
Kenny:Being the disarmingly simple question. Ha ha, try 3.8 billion years of R&D. You know that helps. But and so I just. You know it was just a personal interest. I was just learning about all this and holding it. And then, after we started Bioneers, gabriel and I started a nonprofit that's where Bioneers came from, because what we had also seen was it's not just the seed stocks that were severely threatened, but also the traditional knowledge and the indigenous knowledge. They say, when a shaman dies or an elder dies, it's like burning the library of Alexandria. And so the traditional ecological knowledge is as important as the seed stocks, as the genetics, and so we set up a scholarship.
AJ:Well, they're inseparable, aren't they? They came together.
Kenny:Yes, exactly. And so we set up this scholarship program to support, you know, helping to preserve that knowledge. And then, without going into all the detail there, the idea of a conference came up, of holding a conference for one of my funders. I was actually in, you know, here in Santa Fe. This place called 10,000 waves, that's a Japanese style hot tub. So my friend Josh and I were in the hot tub up there. Well, he was visiting Santa Fe and I was just ranting and raving about all these people doing all this incredible nature-based solutions work and nobody ever heard of them. And he said well, why don't you have a conference? And frankly, I'd never been to a conference. It sounded stone boring and I just kept talking and ignored him. And then he said Kenny, stop, in mid-sentence, I'm giving you $10,000. Have a conference. And that was actually how Buy Adores happened. Wow.
AJ:Did you need convincing, or you were sort of on board that this made perfect sense by that stage?
Nina:You know, I needed some convincing.
Kenny:You had no idea what I was doing.
Nina:No, I mean, you know, Kenny came to me because of my theater background and I also had never been to a conference, and so you know, Kenny came to me because of my theater background and I also had never been to a conference, and so you know, we had the benefit of beginner's mind and we really designed something that we thought would be really interesting and engaging, and in fact it turned out to be so 100%.
Nina:You know, but I sat there at my first conference. I mean, I basically helped him produce it and made sure it was beautiful and greeted everyone and you know that it had a great vibe. But I remember sitting there with my mouth just hanging open, thinking these are the people I want to support with my communications.
AJ:This is incredible you know, oh, I feel like such a new kid on the block, but relate so much, I mean, here I am, I mean I started doing. Actually I feel like such a new kid on the block, but relate so much, I mean, here I am, I mean I started doing. Actually I started with events too, because I just felt like these dialogues I guess, like you guys at the time, had to be more public. In fact I just I actually felt like they needed to be in every town hall, everywhere.
Nina:Yes, I still do.
AJ:Yes. So in 20, I guess 09, I started in earnest to do public events and then they, they grew pretty quickly and I did notice I wonder, if you guys have to, I'll come to this next with you I did notice, even in that decade succeeding decade, a big shift in the appetite and the engagement when we would do the events. The podcast arose in 2017 with the sense that there, there needed to be a way to do more of it without all of the logistics and to go to the people and their land and not have it always have to come to a place invariably a city with a big venue and whatever. So those things have been fulfilling, but it was still with that same motivation that there's which, in a way, is unfortunate that there's so much good stuff happening that nobody knows about.
AJ:I'd like to think there's so much good stuff happening that nobody knows about. I'd like to think there's so much good stuff happening that more people do know about, but in the context of a lot of people feeling overwhelmed and desperate, even, you know, around the polarisation and stuff, jeez, how is it that the good stuff seems so obscure still? I wonder in that sense how 34 years and counting of Bioneers and the books and the films and the theatre. How does it feel to have lived that out and just been filled to the brim with it all over that journey and still feel that the acute need in the current?
Kenny:context. Well, the title of my talk at Bioneers this past year was it's the corporation's stupid, yeah, and I mean, if you want to boil it down to one fundamental factor, that's it, and it's it's why these things are under reported.
Kenny:You know um, and a lot of them are not profitable per se or it doesn't fit within the paradigm, but there but there's a deliberate intention to make people feel a sense of inevitability about the way things are, and that that's the way it has to be and is meant to be a sense of powerlessness, helplessness and resignation, and so I think that's really at the core of a lot of it. It's ultimately to justify an economic system that's predatory and deeply unfair and an extractive mentality. You know that nature is a resource, not a source, that's the worldview. Yeah.
Nina:Well, it's also the effect of capitalism, run amok, you know, and the centralization of power and authority that is invested in depowering the people.
Kenny:You know there are a lot of dimensions to it. I don't want to oversimplify it either, because you know William Randolph Hearst. You know who was the original tabloid master, the Rupert Murdoch of his time, in effect. You know he said his basic MO with his newspapers was crime and underwear. And we do have a lower self, us human beings. You know it's pretty lower.
Nina:And if it bleeds, it leads.
Kenny:Yeah, so I mean it's easy to sell that stuff and it certainly makes money.
AJ:Well, so-called social media has just continued that trajectory. Yeah, that part of ourselves that almost can't resist.
Kenny:But you know that doesn't stop all this stuff from happening. And when you really get behind the curtain and look at the polls, a lot more people from our perspective. I mean in 1990, the first Bioneers Conference, you could count the number of people in the of really leaders in the agricultural field on two hands at most.
Kenny:Probably, on one hand, frankly, now we can't even keep up. I mean, we have a whole team of people, we have a hard team keeping up, so there's a huge proliferation of all this work. It's much, much more widespread. We've seen some of this stuff start to really go mainstream for real, like regenerative agriculture, good example. But so that's also going on, even if it's underreported. It's not to say it isn't happening. Yes, and I think that we're going to see well, you know we'll see more and more about this.
Kenny:But it was very interesting at the conference this year. We had a brilliant scientist there, suzanne Simard, who you know her name yeah, the Mother Tree thesis, and she has most recently been attacked viciously in the scientific community. Part of it is she's become very famous, you know, and they're actually making a Hollywood movie about the mother tree and all that. But the real issue, as she sees it and I would agree is this clash of paradigms and that the extractive industries want this to be seen as simply, this is just a forest, it's just trees, it's, you know, the robber baron's distortion of survival of the fittest. That's not what Darwin said. What Darwin said was survival of those that are best fitted to their environment at a given time and place. That's not the biggest, meanest survival of the fattest, whatever you know. Completely different story there. And for her to talk about a paradigm of mutualism, of cooperation, of interdependence, of interbeing and cooperation at a mass scale of all these different diversity of organisms, that's really threatening, really threatening to the current paradigm and to the economics behind it.
Nina:Well, and there's a gendered aspect to it as well, because she is not the only female scientist under attack right now exactly you know, and it is well, not only scientists, journalists right women at large women at large, yeah who are also some of the doing some of the most effective activist work around the world, you know, and regeneration, defying the, the.
AJ:You know the mass destruction and with such a grip on this perspective and connection. So this is the perfect segue to your book, I think, and, of course, a life's work, or the large part of a life's work. Go on then, please, nina. Part of the subtitle to your book is, of course, your story of listening for leadership, and it was in these ways. I mean, this is what you observed over the decades. Can you speak to some of what you found?
Nina:Well, sure, when we began Bioneers, I actually considered myself to be someone working behind the scenes. I didn't have faith or belief that I had my own vision to bring forward or that my voice really had value in the context of these brilliant people that I got to support, you know. And so it took some time for me to grow into my own vision and voice, and as I did, I began to understand several things. I began to understand how my gender had affected my own sense of possibilities and how much internalized programming I had from the cultural just from the cultural milieu, you know and what I had been raised with to doubt myself and to keep myself small. And at the same time, around the same time, I began to be acknowledged for my leadership, and I didn't like it.
Nina:And this is with literal awards that you're giving it.
Nina:Well, yeah, I was acknowledged in a magazine and I felt like I wanted to deflect it. I didn't feel like I'd earned it and I felt like it somehow painted a target on my back that I didn't feel good about. And I knew from Bioneers, from all these luminaries that I'd been learning from over the years that the earth is calling us all to be leaders in this time. And I thought, well, what's wrong with this picture? You know, if I don't want to be called a leader, that's no good. If we all need to be leaders, how am I going to reconcile that? And so I began to work with women and I realized I began to design a week-long immersion training for women who were leading a change already, and we selected them very carefully and they would all come to this week-long immersion training and say, oh, I don't consider myself a leader.
Nina:And so I began to realize it wasn't just me, it was much more pervasive, and that we needed to really consciously accept the responsibility that we're all reinventing leadership in this time, and so my first book was a collection of essays that I culled from many of the leaders that I had learned about from Bioneers, and I read hundreds of transcripts and said, well, who are the ones that most inspired me, that most made me want to step out and be seen and take a stand, and then looked at the ways that they were each reinventing leadership and grouped them so that I could describe how we're reinventing leadership, and, of course, it's much less hierarchical, it's much more interled rather than externally authorized, it's much more collaborative.
Nina:It depends on a skill that I call relational intelligence, which our mainstream culture doesn't have a lot of regard for, and so the book wound up being mostly women, with two men in it, and I went on to work with over 500 women in the course of that, in the course of about 10 years doing retreats, and I learned a lot about gender and power and privilege and leadership, came to believe in what I call full spectrum leadership, which for me means that we all have feminine and masculine within us.
Nina:And of course we all want to be able to draw from anywhere in our human capacities, in our toolkit.
AJ:Yes, why wouldn't you? Right, exactly, especially in a time that's as challenging as this one is and when we need to be coming up with things we haven't come up with yet or maybe we did, but we've lost them.
Nina:Well, both right. We need to draw from traditional knowledge and we need to reclaim the wisdom of our bodies and our hearts and our spirits to integrate into a whole spectrum of toolkit.
AJ:I really take stock of what you say and that key thrust of the book, which is that it's not elevating women to de-elevate for want of a better word Men. It's coming together with that full spectrum leadership you described. I have all sorts of things going on within me as I read it, as I listened to it. As a young guy who really struggled with I would say the same what I found to be an oppressive culture, and to learn about this culture as a mechanised one made sense. For me it's like, ah yeah, we're just expected to go through that school production line, so to speak, literally into university, college and then into as I was groomed to be the profession that will make you the most money. I was literally that stereotype and I would look back and describe it.
AJ:I didn't know the words at the time, but the spirit that was shrivelling up. I was trying to find a way, but I couldn't see through it, and in that oblivion it got very dark in my late teens. Yet I can now, and so I feel some shame around what I'm about to say. I had two sisters who were younger, another brother who's done quite well. Two sisters who were younger, another brother who's done quite well two sisters who have struggled more. I got lucky. I feel like I was on a knife's edge.
Nina:So I got lucky.
AJ:That's a longer story and then once I saw some light, I could follow it. My sisters have struggled to various extents still. They've transcended in various ways as well. But there's a difference and I've come to be able to recognise the difference they inhabited in our upbringing. But I couldn't see that. I was still on somewhat of an elevated plane because it felt so like diabolically awful myself. So I couldn't see that gender dynamic. I could see how mum was subjected and bless dad, he came a long way before he died too. But I could pick that up as I got older and that's part of what made me more desperate in a way, because I'd look to her but she couldn't intervene, if you will, to just for want of a better word again. But I could see now that it was so much harder for my sisters in those deeper ways and you know you can't help but sit here today and wish you knew that at the time and of course you know you can't, and yet you know.
Nina:I mean, what you're saying resonates so deeply for me because I do believe that we are all as damaged as each other from a patriarchal culture with all those biases, and it's hurt all of us. But you know, what I've found is that it's as important for us to unlearn what we learned from that cultural conditioning and then to you know and to and to choose. I mean, there is such tremendous fulfillment for me and freedom in having done the work to peel away layer after layer after layer that told me I wasn't good enough or I couldn't do it. Um, to realize, no, the world needs me now and I, I want to show up with the best I got and, and you know so, I want that for everyone. I want it for everyone, regardless of their gender, because it's freeing and it's creative and it's a beautiful way to meet life and what a gift we have to be alive in this huge transformational time. But it calls us to do a lot of inner work in order to show up in the best way externally.
Kenny:Well, as you might say, in Australia, she has an agenda.
Nina:Yes, well you know, Carl Jung said the feminine is the interior and the masculine is the exterior. The feminine is the interior and the masculine is the exterior. So we're all very deeply programmed to be performance oriented, to do a lot, to have big to do lists, to prove our value by overperforming and being perfectionist. And frankly, it's a it's a very tilted game and I don't think it's going to get us where we need to go.
Nina:So you know, I'm a great, great advocate for the inner work that makes us better leaders and better human beings.
AJ:To go on with it for a moment. With you, Nina. Is this some of what? Had you come around full circle with your mum? That passage in your book was so powerful. Was it on her deathbed that you reconnected, or had you come around to connect prior to that?
Nina:You know, it's one of the things I'm most proud of in my life, actually, aj is that when I moved here, I knew that I had to reconcile with my mother, because I couldn't live in the same small town as she is, as she was, without, you know, without making my peace with her. Otherwise, you know, that relationship was going to define my life, and so she and I entered into a several year period of very consciously going through all kinds of modalities to heal together, and we did. We did a lot of healing. You know it was still, I mean, my relationship with her had many gifts and many challenges, but that's probably true for everyone with their parents, you know. So we did find ways to really love each other and I'm so grateful that I did that and that I knew to commit myself to it, because not a lot of people do, and it freed me up in meaningful, powerful ways.
AJ:And that I gather from you that that went a whole other level as she died and even after she died.
Nina:It's still going on.
AJ:Really.
Nina:Sure, Sure, I mean. You know there are many psychologists who believe that a lot of your personality gets formed through your early years of life, and I'm still grappling with biases that I have, both from deciding that I needed to define myself as being the opposite of her and, you know, finding how to accept the beauty of her gifts, even while she had some personality disorders that were really hard to relate to and be with, you know. So I think it's a lifelong process and, you know, part of what I loved about the leadership work was that I came to understand that I'm cultivating myself to show up in my most authentic and most how do I want to say this most present way, and I anticipate that I'll be doing that until the day I leave this earth, and it's not like leadership is something you go do a degree and you're done.
Nina:You know, I think we're all. We have the opportunity to keep cultivating ourselves towards who I believe our souls brought us here to be, and that's a gift and it's beautiful yeah, kenny, I feel well we can have a man's talk now.
AJ:Oh boy, with our feminine sides. How has your journey, has it been significant for you to learn? About this gender stuff, or did you come up with more of an awareness early days?
Kenny:Well, I had a very strong mother for starters, and I think one thing Nina liked about me was I have a strong feminine side, as she puts it. So that's always been very present in my life. But at the same time I mean, and also for as long as I've really sort of been working, I've always had strong female partners. My partner on the Hoxie film was a woman who was a public health nurse, and obviously Nina. But I've worked with other women, so that's somewhat natural to me. That's not to say in any way that I didn't also come out of the whole culture.
AJ:Yes, exactly that's why, I wondered.
Kenny:Going back to the 50s and 60s, my God, it was pretty bad, to say the least. But at the same time, I came of age during the 60s, with feminism, and you know, so it was. It was definitely in my world, and Nina's a very, very strong woman, you know, and whatever your own assessment of your own consciousness was when we first got together, nevertheless you were very independent, you were very active in the world and A very strong woman. I mean, you know, as say, behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. So I think that has been that element in our relationship, probably from the beginning.
Kenny:But it's kind of horrifying what we're put through as men in terms of the programming and the conditioning. And what's just heartbreaking to me now is to see the whole incel thing. And there's this annual report done called the State of American Men. Oh yeah, it's just devastating of how lost a majority of men in this country are at this time. And then they're being used and abused, politically, you know, for all kinds of nefarious purposes.
AJ:And I dread to think, if I grew up in this era, you know, because I was angry, I was lost and angry, so what would that have led? I mean, to me it led to rock and roll and I thrashed it out, but I met the world and through that myself and I got lucky. That was a good birthing in a way and good family to find in a way. But yeah, if I had a different time, would I have found a different family? I feel like I can reach back and relate in some way to these people and feel them in some way, which I guess it's part of. What we've got to do now is to feel each other in, even though that feels like the enemy well, partly that, but I think also partly.
Kenny:I mean a lot of the places where the most progressive change is happening is we actually have women in positions of decision making, yeah, politically and economically. So that's also an element here, and women are outperforming men across the board in this country, certainly right now academically, financially. You often hear from your women friends, they have trouble finding a boyfriend because their men are so screwed up. Frankly, it's a real issue, but I think elevating women in power is very important for real.
Nina:Really, we need male allies seriously badly right now, and it's part of the tragedy of the paradigm shift we're in is that the whole feminist movement has been misconstrued as meaning women on top and men subservient, and it's not that. It's never been that. We're just looking for allyship and we're looking for an egalitarian, truly collaborative framework. You know, where everyone can win.
AJ:And this country's got a history of that. That's been influential for you with the Haudenosaunee Absolutely Iroquois people.
Kenny:Absolutely yeah, and a lot of Indigenous cultures all over the world, and a lot don't too.
AJ:Some have matriarchal roots and some don't. Yes, you know, it's interesting to perceive the diversity in the governance and cultures they had too.
Nina:And the influence of the Catholic Church has been global.
AJ:Yes, yes.
Nina:That's also complexified the cultures of.
AJ:Indigenous peoples We've covered a bit on the podcast, the work of Eleanor Ostrom of late too. She comes up in all sorts of conversations these days in terms of governance systems and where they are working, as she had observed in many contexts around the world, even in or in the shadow of, as some guests had said, the behemoth or the cultures that we're talking about. I pick up through this conversation, perhaps particularly early about. I pick up through this conversation perhaps particularly early, that levels and moments of uncanny happenstances that were pivotal and I know you've written about it and talked about it too these times in your life where the things that you wouldn't have perceived even possible or even to be there invisible forces, if you will, or at least the uncanny how that you just happen to be there or that happened to happen then I'm curious, then again, over the journey of your lives to date. How do you reflect on that, those forces? Is there something there that you've developed language around or a sense around?
Nina:You know, what I would say about that, aj, is that I was not raised with any formal religious training, and that was a blessing for me, because when I found my way into a spiritual relationship with life, what I have come to recognize is that for me, the divine is embodied in what I call mother life, or what is commonly referred to as the natural world.
Nina:You know, I love nature, I mean with a passion that really I used to think that if I showed it in public people would think I was crazy, right, but I really really love it and, and I believe that you know, that framework allows me to imagine that there are all kinds of invisible forces on our side, and I mean, it's true that in our lives together there have been so many blessings that often seem counterintuitive or how did you do that? Or wow, that was lucky. I mean it's amazing to me that we've pulled off Bioneers for 35 years, but we have and there's been a lot of prayer behind it and, I believe, a lot of support from Mother Life, because I think she's the greatest power there is. She and love, right, are the greatest powers we have, and so my personal opinion is that we've had a lot of help and I don't know exactly where it comes from. I don't know if it's ancestors or disembodied spirits or nature herself, but I know that we've had it and I know that it's real, at least for me.
Kenny:You know they don't call it the great mystery for nothing. I made a film series that's relevant to this that hopefully your listeners won't run away screaming. You can see it online if you dare. Your listeners won't run away screaming, but you can see it online if you dare. Called Changing of the Gods, when the Stars Align for Revolutionary Times. I don't know if you're familiar with it, aj, at all.
Kenny:I don't know, if I am either. So when I was first fleeing the East Coast, I landed in San Francisco for about nine months and made friends with an older woman and her daughter who was a Russian emigre and she was very mystical, looked like a tarot card herself, and I'm coming out of hardcore politic, political activism and student movements, and she wants me to get an astrology reading and I did everything, politely, that I could to sidestep it, dodge it, ignore it, and finally she really leaned on me and said all right, all right, all right. Well, this guy told me, this astrologer told me more about myself than anyone could possibly have known. In fact told me more than I knew and things that actually influenced my life from there. So I was just interested in that.
Kenny:But astrology has been regarded as magical thinking and nonsense and quackery whatever, and so it's not something for polite company and I never particularly talk about it with people. But anyway, long story short, I asked a friend of mine who's an astrologer if there were any great books written not about personal, subjective, person-centered astrology, but societal. Are there forces happening all at once to all of us that can actually be documented in any sense? Or, you know, attract in that way and he turned me on to this amazing book called Cosmos and Psyche Intimations of a New Worldview by Richard Tarnas, and Richard is an exceptional. He's a cultural historian and an exceptional scholar, really, really serious scholar, with classical training as a Jesuit coming out of high school and all that. But he backcast across history to look at, at any given time, the outer planets which move more slowly from Saturn on out Jupiter. Actually were there patterns that could be discerned culturally?
Kenny:mass know mass culture and I read the book in 2012, absolutely blew my mind. I mean, the data are overwhelming, you know, and these periods correspond to the archetypes that astrologers associate with those planets. So the real metric, which, of course, carl Jung wrote the famous monograph Synchronicity. Are coincidences, just coincidences, or is something aligning here that these things somehow happen? The conditions are there for something to happen, and so synchronicity is actually one of our metrics in terms of you know you're in the flow when things click. In those ways, it also means you really have to be paying attention. It's not like there's a hand of fate that's going to do this for you. You've got to be in the game and paying attention.
Kenny:And there's a lot of nuance and subtlety, and you know, for example, uranus, the planet. Uranus, among other things, is the trickster. You know the coyote. Uranus, among other things, is the trickster. You know the coyote, and one of the characteristics of the trickster is, as Freud famously said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a phallic symbol. So sometimes it could just be a fake out. You know, don't be too sure of yourself. Humility is our constant companion. But, yeah, I think synchronicity for myself, when I feel like I'm in the flow and really paying attention and looking for cues and clues. And you know, and you don't always know, and you certainly don't always know something in the moment. It may not become clear for years or decades later that oh wow, look what happened at that moment.
Nina:You know so, yes, so well, and I want to add, because I think you're very modest about this, changing of the gods is really well worth checking out. It's wonderful, it's available online and it's a brilliant masterwork I instantly assumed that, oh, I didn't listen to it.
AJ:I didn't listen to that bit.
Kenny:The last episode is called Conscious Cosmos. And what if? Let's say so? The film tracks this one particular planetary picture of the planets Uranus and Pluto, which each time they recur. According to the hypothesis anyway, it's a period of revolutionary transformation, large scale upheaval, you know, political upheaval across every sector of human life. So it happened from 2007 through the end of 2020. The last time it happened was 1960 to 1972. Is that right? Everybody in this last period was saying God, this is like the 60s, yes, and you go back in time and each leapfrog across these cycles when that picture recurs french revolution, same period, mid-19th century, same period every single time.
Kenny:So what that suggests is could it be that consciousness is actually inherent in the cosmos itself? We're not just talking about intelligence and nature. Very few people dispute that anymore. I mean, it's been held for 500 years in science that human beings are the only ones who have intelligence. Everything else is just a machine, a dumb machine, right? Instinctual and mechanical. Well, we know that's not true anymore. But what if consciousness itself is part of the fabric of the universe, you know? So that's the kind of next level if you were, if you dare, you know, to go where our species has not fully gone before it's also an amazing view of movement history throughout time yeah I mean it's, it's quite well yeah this go where humanity hasn't been before.
AJ:Have we maybe.
Kenny:Ancient cultures have Traditional indigenous. Sure, of course it's all ancient, not all, but I mean. The thing now is we've had the capacity to destroy life but on a limited scale, it's regional or local.
Kenny:Now it's global and it's the entire species at risk and the biosphere as we know it. Earth will be fine. Earth's got at least another billion years to go before it blows up and turns into a red dwarf. But we're not talking about saving the Earth, we're talking about saving ourselves. You know, let's get real here. Nature will repair, just not on a human time frame.
Nina:And a bunch of our relative species.
AJ:Yes, yes, if you take a bunch with us.
Kenny:So we need the ancient knowledge and we also need every tool we've got, which includes contemporary science, which includes all the you know. This is when people say we're in uncharted territory. Actually we're in territory that has never existed on a human time frame. It's not that it's uncharted.
AJ:This hasn't been here before yeah, so it makes me recall the story I've heard from you, I think, nina, of how pioneers even made it through all those years. I remember the story of of the funding that came your way when you were nearly done and dusted, that came out of an uncanny situation. I just feel like adding a little more flesh on the bone from your lived experience to this conversation before we move to wind up with the funder who came to you after a meditation.
Nina:Yeah, yeah. So it was nearing the end of the year and we were a half a million dollars short of meeting our budget. And as the year end was drawing closer and closer, we had gone to all of our major funders and asked them to consider that and they had all said no. And I was working with a woman who was trained in several indigenous modalities and I considered to be quite knowledgeable and a deep meditator actually. Well, but that's.
Kenny:Oh sorry, go ahead.
Nina:No, and I kind of set it as a throwaway line like gee, is there anything you could teach me that could help me to attract resources to Bioneers? And she was very serious and she said, yes, I'll show you. And she taught me I don't talk about this in public much- Maybe the last time, probably for good reason, she taught me how to program a crystal.
Nina:Oh wow. And you know, had it been anyone else teaching me something like that, I would have been rolling my eyes, I would have been out the door. I would have just scoffed, but would have been out the door, I would have just scoffed. But this woman was someone I respected so deeply and so I paid close attention and I did everything she taught me. And a few days it was actually just about the middle of December that a funder called and said I heard in my meditation this morning that I should give you what you wanted. And I had been meditating and focusing. You know, programming the crystal involved developing a visualization for what you wanted to have happen, and so I had Bioneers as this great tree and I had women around it watering the tree and paying homage to the tree. And there it was. We just got this phone call out of the blue. That's interesting though.
AJ:So it was metaphor you were envisaging, though it wasn't money in your hand no, not at all.
Nina:It was nurturance to the system. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah that is.
AJ:I'm so glad for it, okay. So, with that in mind, as we weave to a close, you guys are obviously still powering on. I'm wondering what's next for you, and have you any words for us, next gen even? What might be to look out for and what might be to look out for?
Nina:Well, I would love to see Bioneers be reached and visible by people, many more people around the world, because we do sometimes refer to it as a natural antidepressant and we know that an awful lot of young people have come to Bioneers saying you know, I showed up here in despair, not knowing what I could possibly do with my life, and a great many of them have come to me and said you know, now I feel like I have 10 options and I even know how to pursue them and how to learn about them and see if I can go that way. So that's one thing I mean I would say to next-gen young people, many next-gens actually. We need you, and I want to remind us all that we need each other, because I don't think we have a lot of training in intergenerational collaboration and I think this is a time that really calls for it. And you know, as an elder myself now a young elder, a yelder I call myself.
Nina:I'm learning how to be in reciprocal mentorship with young people and how to really respect what they know more than I do and what I know from my own lived experience, and so I just want to encourage folks to see what lights you up and pursue that, and don't worry so much about the money. Worry about what lights you up, because that's what's regenerative, and we all, I mean. I feel so lucky and blessed to have done work that surrounds me with people who inspire me and who help me coalesce a vision of the world we're all working towards and we need that, but we need each other to get there more than anything. You know, practice collaboration and don't ignore your internal realities and let yourself feel your emotions and become aware of what your body's wisdom is teaching you, because we need that too. I mean, nature created us and we didn't create her, and there's a lot of wisdom in all these systems that have been devalued by our cultures but that we need now. So listen for all of it.
AJ:Oh, nina, before you start, kenny, sometimes nature chimes in at the most extraordinary moments Rolling thunder here in the mountains. Quite often I'm telling you, there we are, kenny.
Kenny:Okay, well, the drum roll. It was sunny when we started, and now, it's completely gray and thunderous.
Kenny:You know, this is a dire moment, let's not kid ourselves. I mean and it really is now or never we're already in overtime is the truth. So the pressure I always feel is how to make a difference that really makes a difference, because there are all kinds of great things to do, but is it to really move the needle? I love that line. So one thing is that really since the beginning, our MO has been around part of it anyway has been around nature-based solutions, and that's still what's missing in the bigger mix. I mean the train has left the station in terms of renewable energy, it's happening. I mean the train has left the station in terms of renewable energy, it's happening. I mean they're going to slow it down, hobble it, do whatever they can, but forget it. The game is over.
Kenny:You know, fossil fuels are history and this could move really quickly from here. In fact, for economic reasons, yeah, exactly yeah, I think so. But the nature-based solutions is that paradigm clash, and that paradigm clash and people are still so undereducated about this and just don't understand. So we're looking at doing some special projects now, both with media but also actual on the ground stuff, to try to catalyze, scale and advance the adoption of nature-based solutions, which also relates directly to land conservation, has a lot of implications for indigenous peoples. The rights of nature movement now is really actually a serious thing and is gaining tremendous traction globally, and it's transpartisan it's not left and right at all, you know. So that's something that I'm really excited about and that I'm personally very engaged in. And then, you know, given for a lot of reasons, I mean a lot of what I do is media and you know that kind of thing.
Kenny:And so we're doubling down on a lot of our media and I think the other really huge issue, as I said, is it's the corporation's. Stupid People have misdirected or been misdirected to blame government. It's not government. Government has been captured by the corporations, don't kid yourself. And they're manipulating it every which way for their own interests and to deflect you. So don't kid yourself about that.
Kenny:So we're looking at doing some special projects and partnering with a number of people and we have a new project relatively that just started last May, called BioNews Learning, which is an actual platform for trainings, workshops, how to get in the game if you're not in the game, to learn about these different you know, like, if you want to learn what rights of nature is and how to actually bring it to your community, you can do that.
Kenny:So, whatever your interest is kind of yeah. So we're going to be scaling that up over the next year or two and looking at, you know, other anyway a lot of some interesting political projects, really yeah. And then some interesting political projects, but really yeah, um, and then we're deep, deep into the indigenous thing, as we have been from the beginning, and that's um, it's tribes are at the forefront worldwide in so many of these issues, including the rights of nature, movement, and there's so much to learn still there to communicate. So, yeah, rightful place. Yeah, that's what we're up to, yeah well, so much, yes, nina yeah, I just wanted to add that.
Nina:You know, for me it helps to remember that we are in this moment of birthing a new civilization because, everything about the civilization we've inherited is crumbling and falling apart.
Nina:We know it's not working and it's terribly corrupted. So for me, what's exciting about that is that the opportunity for young people is to see what you love and what you most want to protect and defend, because there are opportunities for reinvention everywhere, whether it's working with children or in health care or an economy, or I mean really every aspect of human civilization. And so you know, if you don't focus so much about money, do what you love and trust that the money will come. That's what I would say.
Kenny:Yeah, yeah, I think I mean people ask me, young people, or young people ask me you know what should I do, and I have enough trouble figuring out my own life. I'm not really big on giving advice, but I really agree with Nina if you follow your heart, you can't go wrong.
AJ:I'm curious about many things of what you guys are going on with. So maybe we'll have to follow up at some stage. But the media thing there's so much media that's falling away, and not just the disruption to mainstream, the old weeklies and public radio where's the way in media? I mean you're doing your bit, obviously. Is there something more of us should be doing on that front or can be doing well?
Kenny:you know, one of the most important things, certainly in this country. I'm hesitant to always talk about other places because I really don't know, but um, one of the worst things that happened is the corporatization of local media, because although people don't trust the national mass media, they do trust local and the weather and the sports and the local news.
Kenny:And the right wing was very clever in corporatizing those and putting the same message out and the same disinformation, and it's well shown that when people get good local news, they make much better decisions about actual solutions and pathways and that, among other things, is really critical. We just did a big panel at Bioneers this year about that. We're about to produce a radio show about that. Really I'll look forward to that.
Kenny:Yeah it's a critically, critically important thing. And also much more news is moving to non-profit now. That's another key to the whole thing. If you stop monetizing and commodifying all the news then you get much better news.
AJ:You get much better food, not just pride and underwear. You get much better everything, arguably.
AJ:I think, you can see the threads, can't you? They go through the whole thing. It's really powerful because in Australia right now those corporates abandoned local media during COVID. They just dropped them, so towns had nothing. But now, just in the last 12 months even there's a plethora of outlets coming up that are just often young people, some ex-prominent journos, but some just community getting together and even in print, and they're making it work and, of course, without those lofty expectations of what a public radio CEO still expects to get, for example, that make it hard to make it viable. Quote unquote, that's true.
AJ:Yeah, I really take stock of that.
Nina:That's a mechanism that's already seeding again in the shadows community, whether it's your food system, your where does your water come from? Gathering with your neighbors and having potlucks, getting to know the people that are around you.
Kenny:I think you know that's a really important key yeah, a friend of ours likes to say how we're going to hold it together is to hold it together.
AJ:That's beautiful and I think back to where we started around. The sensitivity to soil, seed, plant, ancestor, yeah, let alone processes with our immediate ancestors. The whole kit sort of dovetails in there.
Kenny:I told you, aj, I don't do interviews anymore. I just don't do it for whatever reasons. You looked really pretty good, but that wasn't enough. But Australia, we have really good friends in Australia and someday we aspire to come there. So that's why we're sitting here with you. It's our agenda.
AJ:You must have manifested it.
Nina:You must have meditated for you.
AJ:Yes, secretly, clearly, no, in all seriousness knowing that about you you, kenny, I'm doubly grateful and very much grateful to you both for having me at your table here. It's been a really moving conversation for me and an absolute honor to be here, thanks.
Nina:Thanks for your work.
Kenny:I enjoyed myself.
Nina:Yeah, me too.
Kenny:Yeah, Good luck, we really support your work.
AJ:NS: Yeah, it's beautiful. AJ: right back at you. That was Nina Simons and Kenny Ausubel, the legendary founders of Bioneers, at home in the land of enchantment, santa fe, new mexico. See various links in the show notes, including to my favorite episode on the wonderful Bioneers podcast - and perhaps my favourite of any podcast: Undam the Klamath - how tribes led the largest river restoration project in US history. And to say I'm looking forward to watching Changing of the Gods is an understatement. I'll have more from here, as always, for subscribing members on Patreon, with great thanks to all of you generous supporting listeners for making this episode possible. If you'd like to join us, just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. Thank you, and thanks, of course, for sharing the podcast with friends or family. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden and, at the top, Green Shoots by the Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Beautiful, excellent. Yeah, wow, that'll be very nice in the background.
Kenny:Will you hear?
AJ:the thunder? you will KA: oh, fun yeah.
