Original subtitles

(birds chirping)

[Voiceover] My name is Sapiens,

Homo Sapiens.

I'm about 200 thousand years old.

And this is my life today.

(energetic busy rhythm)

(cars honking)

(whirring of subway train moving)

(cars honking)

I'm searching for something

but I'm not sure what I'm searching for.

(majestic music)

(birds chirping)

(majestic music)

(water rushing)

(birds chirping)

(crickets chirping)

On those rare occasions when I look up at the sky,

I see all those stars.

And as far as I know,

only our planet has life.

(humming and dramatic music)

Among all the species here on Earth,

I think of myself as the most intelligent,

self-reflective,

and wise.

But am I?

(somber music)

[Voiceover] The United Nations reported

that the world is in serious trouble.

The media are reporting on it.

The world of scientists are showing data.

The folks that have the ability to make change

know that we're in trouble.

So there's fear.

[Voiceover] There has not been this kind of destruction

on the planet since the time of the dinosaurs,

65 million years ago.

[Voiceover] I saw this progress.

(cars honking)

(rumbling on tracks)

And progress has its price.

(energetic music)

Over thousands of years,

we've been progressively empowering ourselves,

becoming more differentiated, more identified

as unique human beings.

But in the process, step by step pulling back

from the natural world.

That process has gone so far now

that we're running into a wall,

an evolutionary wall.

[Voiceover] An evolutionary wall?

Is this the end of my life?

(crickets chirping)

[Voiceover] The only way we'll ever make it as a species

on this planet is if we reconnect with nature.

[Voiceover] Nature?

Isn't that what I've been trying to evolve away from?

Not to be dependent on nature?

Not to be at the mercy of nature's wrath?

For the last 35 thousand years,

even as awakening hunter-gatherers,

we've been pulling back from nature.

And then about 10 thousand years ago,

we woke up to nature's seasons, nature's cycles,

and in that process we saw the possibility

of becoming farmers.

And that's been a process of empowering ourselves

and taking control of our own lives,

our own destiny.

And about 300 years ago, we saw not only

could we farm nature, we could manipulate matter.

And we pulled back further from nature.

(energetic music)

(gunfire)

Oh.

(fire crackling)

(somber music)

Technically our species name is Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

And to be sapient means to be wise.

So to be Homo Sapiens Sapiens means

to be doubly wise.

It's not only do we know,

we know that we know.

[Voiceover] Sapiens sapiens,

yes, that's me.

And because I know that I know,

I've made up many stories of my dance

and fight with nature.

In the Bible, there's a key passage

that encourages us to have dominion over the earth.

That's means we would be in a controlling position

relative to other life forms,

other creatures on the earth,

and they were in a position of serving us

in our own evolution.

The story that science tells us very basically

is that we live in a universe that's meaningless,

purposeless, just simply an accidental material evolution.

We thought of Earth as just stuff,

and it led to an orientation of use.

So Earth is here for us to use.

And I think we've now come to the end of that track,

and it's no longer serving us.

And we see, instead of dominion,

we're really participants in the natural world.

And that's coming really much more into alignment

with some of the Eastern traditions

as well as some of the indigenous traditions

in spirituality.

(bells ringing)

Buddhism talks about the inter dependent co-origination

of all things in nature.

All things in life arise and co-exist together.

And it means we're not in a privileged position.

We're not in a place of dominion.

We're in a place of participation.

A similar theme arises with the indigenous

American Indian traditions:

the aliveness of nature,

that our aliveness connects with that aliveness.

(drums beating)

In Christianity, and to some extent

in Islam and Judaism,

the sense of dominion is now shifting

towards a feeling of stewardship and trusteeship.

So rather than having power over,

we're in a respectful and responsible relationship

to the natural world.

(water running)

(birds calling)

[Voiceover] So the last 3.8 billion years that life

has been on this planet,

all of these individual species

kind of started working together.

By virtue of being in the same habitats

and the same ecosystems, they begin

to leverage those relationships

in order to create conditions conducive to life.

(tranquil music)

If you could imagine that

sort of emergent property scaling up,

it could actually explain some of the planetary phenomena

that we see today.

[Voiceover] So, we're getting away from this idea

that nature is all machinery

and looking into the Earth as a single living system.

[Voiceover] That idea had a mystical name,

Gaia.

Imagine: A scientific hypothesis in the 1970s

named after a Greek goddess?

No wonder so many people didn't buy it.

But now, scientists seem to be finding

that Earth can really self-regulate

like any single living organism.

(dramatic music)

Earth is alive.

Scientists thought for a long time,

it's only because Earth is

the exact right distance from the sun.

Because you see, our molecules,

if they get too cold, they freeze up

(ping)

and the organism dies.

If they get too hot,

they unfold and the organism dies.

We have to be in a certain range of temperature,

(joyful bells)

and that's where Earth is.

But over four billion years,

this is what we've learned in the 20th century,

the sun was 25% cooler.

So it sent its rays to Earth,

and Earth had all of these heat-trapping gases

to keep the sunlight in and warm up the planet

to the temperature for life.

But over four billion years,

the sun got hotter and hotter.

As it got hotter, Earth drew carbon dioxide out

of the atmosphere so it wouldn't get too hot for life.

Earth has regulated itself

by changing its atmosphere,

by drawing down carbon dioxide

while the sun heated up.

So you see, if we, in industrial civilization,

are now reversing that trend,

we're actually going against the intelligence,

the ordering that brought forth life.

(water rushing)

(dramatic music)

(gulls cawing)

There's evidence that suggests that the organisms,

the biosphere, plays a very, very significant role

into how the planetary systems work.

And you add in the layers of the geosphere

and the atmosphere, and it becomes

an incredibly complex system.

But that interactive system ultimately means

that everything is interconnected

and interdependent.

(dramatic music)

[Voiceover] We're completely nature.

We breathe the same air that every other animal breathes.

There is no separation.

This understanding

of the self-regulating nature of Earth,

we didn't know about this.

For 400 years in science, we just didn't.

But now we're realizing we're destroying billions

of years of creativity that enabled

all of this vitality to exist.

(owl hoots)

But we're awakening to that mistake,

and now we see, instead of thinking of Earth

as something to exploit and use,

we're beginning to realize it is a community

that we are to join and enhance.

That's the big shift.

[Voiceover] If I had to dominate nature,

animals were no exception.

After all, they don't have feelings like I do.

Or do they?

(slower, reflective music)

Where did we get this strange idea

that animals don't have feelings?

It actually goes back to one of the founders

of the modern world, René Descartes.

So he, back there with Newton and Galileo,

they were giving birth to a new world.

And Descartes, as the philosopher,

was asking himself the question,

"Do animals have feelings?"

And at first he thought, "Maybe they do."

And so he was starting off with animals close to humans,

and then he was working his way down.

And when he got to the oyster,

that was too much.

He just couldn't imagine an oyster having feelings.

So then he just said then none of them do.

And he imagined then that animals were machines.

And when they gave off sounds like pain,

it just meant they were machines that were malfunctioning.

I mean, it's a really bizarre view, ultimately.

And yet, our factory farms, our cosmetics industry?

We treat animals as if they were just sort of nothing,

and it goes right back to this mistaken view

of the nature of the universe.

(hopeful music)

Western industrial people are at that stage now

where we are challenged by feeling our way

into the lives of the animals.

The mother bear cares for her cubs

just the same way we care for our children.

All of these beings live within feelings

that are just as intense as ours.

(hopeful music)

It's not just making the planet work for humans.

It's to participate in bringing forward

the thriving, vibrant community of life

including all of the species of this planet.

(dramatic music)

(sniffing)

If we take the four and a half billion years

that Earth has been around

and we compress it into one year

so that the Earth is born on January 1st,

just past midnight,

and we're standing on December 31st,

just before midnight,

life's been around for 3.8 billion years

which means it showed up on February 25th.

And then after about a month,

we see photosynthesis, the planet rapidly change

from a carbon-rich atmosphere

to an atmosphere that has quite a bit more oxygen.

And as a result, we see a lot more diversification

and single-celled organisms dominate the planet

through April and May and June and July

and half of August.

In September's the first time we have sexual reproduction,

and then it isn't even until November

that we start seeing fungi.

And after the fungi, come the fish.

And then eventually we have land plants.

And when terra firma starts being colonized,

then we have insects and amphibians

and reptiles and mammals.

Flowers have only been here since December 20th.

The loss of the dinosaurs, that was Christmas.

And then if we go to today, December 31st,

and we look at our ancestors, the hominids,

the first primates that came out of the trees

and walked the plains of Africa with two legs,

they showed up at 11:30 this morning.

And Homo Sapiens Sapiens?

We've been here for 23 minutes.

And the entire Industrial Revolution

which defines life as we know it

to where we look for ideas,

how we presume, how we live on this planet,

everything around our technologies and our media,

the last 200 years,

one second.

That's it.

(air rushing)

[Voiceover] I'm such a young species.

It's hard to believe.

We have something like 99% match

of our genes with chimpanzees.

Even with trees, we share 25% of the genes with trees,

so that we're starting to realize

that we're really all kin.

We're all cousins.

(flutes and rattles with rhythmic music)

And our understandings of many of the peoples

that I come from and that I work with

is that every aspect of creation,

every aspect of an ecosystem is alive

from the smallest particles of creation

to the largest.

Each of them are necessary to be a part

of keeping something in balance in the natural world.

[Voiceover] I thought of myself as different,

separate, superior,

yet all this is making sense.

I convinced myself I needed to separate from nature,

but I probably went too far.

And then, so you can think, huh,

maybe this new deep understanding required

our disconnection from nature.

It's a possibility.

Maybe, to reach this full understanding,

we had to go through this period of disconnection.

Who knows for sure?

But the exciting thing is that we're learning

our commonality with all of life.

[Voiceover] I can't give up technology

and go back to living in a cave.

Then, what?

It's not about giving up technology.

In fact, the way through our evolutionary wall

is by designing the most advanced technological era ever,

the biological revolution.

The entire Industrial Revolution

was ultimately about taking:

taking minerals, taking soil, taking oil, taking water.

And we're very rapidly learning

that there's a limit to how much that we can take.

So by redefining our relationship,

it isn't nature is there for us,

but we ultimately are part of the natural world.

Our lives depend on it.

And if we can quiet our cleverness

and we can instead borrow the recipe

instead of taking the raw materials,

then we've entered the biological revolution.

Biomimicry is conscious emulation of nature's genius.

We actually make an intentional choice

to look to the other organisms for inspiration

about how we can live better on this planet

for our designs, for our processes, our systems.

So ultimately, a biological revolution means

we as a species, Homo Sapiens, have to learn

to align itself back with the strategies

that have succeeded for the other 30 million species

that are on the planet today.

And they've been around a lot longer than we have

as a species.

And so, with 3.8 billion years of R&D behind them,

you might say there's a little bit of genius in that

that we can borrow from.

We have, as a race, invented all sorts of tools.

We don't have to abandon that knowledge.

We need to use that knowledge but open up our thinking

and use those tools and that knowledge

to then go back and revisit nature

and find new solutions.

[Voiceover] I used to think I could figure anything out,

but how can I create objects without destroying nature?

[Dayna] The answer lies looking at nature itself.

Take a look at Morpho butterflies,

an incredibly brilliant bright blue color,

but you know, there's no pigment in these butterflies.

The wings have nanostructures that create color

just by their ability to refract light.

And by emulating this design, scientists have created

fabric, cosmetics, paint without the need for toxic dyes.

In fact, they've even created displays

that use minimal power and are fully visible

in bright sunlight.

(hopeful music)

[Voiceover] Mimicking nature is still far

from being an everyday reality.

But I'm starting to see the potential

for a new technological era, inspired by nature.

(happy music)

There are turbines that powered with minimal energy

that emulate the shape of the flow forms in seashells.

There are self-cooling buildings

that are emulating the way termite mounds cool,

and even high-speed bullet trains

that are emulating the beak of the kingfisher bird.

One of the biggest challenges that we're facing

as a species on this planet today

is climate change.

And the fact that we are pumping so much carbon dioxide

into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases,

that we're changing.

We're changing the whole dynamics of the planet.

(drums beating)

(crashing noise)

That we actually have the opportunity

to look to the natural world and ask,

"What do you do with an excess carbon dioxide source?

"And how do you prevent the production

of that carbon dioxide in the first place?"

And plants provide an incredible opportunity.

Plants photosynthesize,

and photosynthesis is the magic combination

of taking CO2 and water, and in the presence of sunlight,

creating energy and sugars and oxygen.

Learning from the plants, well,

there's researchers that have now been able

to use catalysts, pulling carbon dioxide

out of the atmosphere.

There's enough energy that hits the planet every day

to power all of our energy needs.

And by learning from some of the specific parts

of photosynthesis itself, we can bio-optimize.

We can improve on our solar panels today.

And ideally, we get to a place where we're able

to even manufacture our solar panels

in a way that is sustainable.

(serene music)

When it comes to biomimicry,

the conscious emulation of nature's genius

is ultimately about recognizing that life

creates conditions conducive to life.

And so, to truly practice biomimicry,

it's beyond emulating form, what nature has made.

But it's also asking, how has she made it

and how does it fit in the larger ecosystem?

And it comes from a place of quieting our cleverness

and having the thanksgiving.

Thank you for sharing your ideas with me.

Thank you for giving us some insights

about how we as such a young species

can actually learn to live here on the planet.

(waves splashing)

(gull calling)

(crickets chirping and frogs croaking)

(subway rushing noise)

[Voiceover] It's no wonder that as I moved away

from nature, I was also moving away

from nurturing my body.

I used to think that all I needed to survive

was a cold beer and a pizza.

But now I'm realizing that I need clean air,

clean water, the sun, and vibrant foods

that capture those elements.

(water burbling)

If you stop and think about what's happening

when you're breathing, it can actually be

a very profound meditation on your connection

to the environment around you.

You're taking in from the air around your body

what your body needs to survive,

and you're breathing out what is no longer useful to you.

And the fascinating thing about that

is the trees are doing the exact same thing,

but they need what we're exhaling.

And we need what they're exhaling.

We really are that connected.

[Voiceover] Trees are our partners.

Trees are a critical piece of the life support system

of the planet.

In Los Angeles, the incidence of obesity,

diabetes, skin cancer, asthma, and lung disease

is killing people.

That map of where the highest concentrations are

is in reverse proportion to the highest concentration

of tree canopy.

Now, it's a socio-economic correlation,

but it's now being called environmental justice.

[Voiceover] Trees have been my shelter and my fuel.

Now I realize that they also help to store water.

[Dayna] When rain hits a tree, its leaves and branches

collect the water and soften its impact on the ground.

The mulch and the soil below the tree acts like a sponge

and slowly releases that water into the soil.

The roots and the fungi soak up that water,

ultimately creating an underground reservoir.

So trees are a natural water treatment system

and can provide communities with this essential element.

(laughing)

(water trickling)

[Voiceover] Without water,

I can only survive for a few days.

And to think that my body is made up

of about 60 to 70% water.

The sun nourishes life on Earth.

As a diurnal animal, who evolved under the sun,

how did I get to view sunlight

as such a guilty pleasure?

Besides my lifestyle taking me mostly indoors,

I also convince myself to stay away from the sun

for fear of sun cancer.

Did I overdo it?

We've discovered there's an epidemic

of vitamin D deficiency,

and this is contributing to the risk for diabetes,

heart disease, certain cancers, osteoporosis.

There are several other risk factors

for heart disease, but vitamin D deficiency

can increase the risk by as much as double.

Interestingly, if we slather with sunblock

and keep covered up with clothing

and our vitamin D levels go down very low,

we increase our risk for skin cancer.

[Voiceover] Well now, I might just start

giving myself a little fun in the sun.

(cheerful music)

[Voiceover] We get charged up by being out in the sun.

It actually helps our brain make serotonin

which helps us feel happy and alive.

[Voiceover] It was only a matter of time

until I started to feel the consequences

of so many bad choices.

(sad music)

[Voiceover] A research study was done

across the US in socio-economic groups

where cord blood was taken from the baby's umbilical cord

at the time of birth.

This blood was analyzed for 200 and some toxins

commonly found on the planet.

The average number of toxins found

in all four quadrants of the country

was over 200 toxins, almost the entire panel.

(baby cooing)

So what this tells me is we can't be too careful

in terms of what we drink and what we eat

and the air we breathe.

I do prescribe medications.

They definitely have great value, therapeutically

in my practice and in the field of medicine.

I think there's room to include more natural approaches

in terms of herbal or naturopathic approaches

which may be a subtler intervention and over time

can bring the same desired result.

Cost is very affordable and side effects

are minimal to none.

So in my practice, I will recommend

a therapeutic nutrition approach

before a pharmaceutical approach

if I can avoid some of the possible side effects

of the pharmaceutical medication.

We still need to keep in the back of our mind

that Western medicine, if the condition worsens,

can always come in later

and the patient can enter the allopathic system

at that point.

But it's not necessarily the place they need to start.

[Voiceover] Over the last several decades,

my distancing, I meant, my evolving away from nature,

took me far away from natural foods.

Progress was to have a meal that was ready in an instant.

Maybe the time saved wasn't such a great trade-off

after all.

[Voiceover] Definitely eating foods as close

to their naturally occurring form

from when they were in the field for vegetables and fruits

is a healthier way to have them

because the nutrients, the enzymes, the vitamins

are all going to be more present, more intact,

in larger quantity.

So the closer to nature, the better.

The more organically grown, the better.

[Voiceover] If commercials seduced me

with processed foods,

nature is seducing me with beauty.

This is one of the healthiest things you can do

is look at your plate or your salad

and include these beautiful colors

and try include as many different colors

on your plate that you can.

This is a great thing to do with kids too.

(upbeat music)

[Voiceover] Besides nature seducing me

into eating natural foods,

it also lures me back to health.

I can recover faster from surgeries,

have fewer complications,

and need fewer painkillers when I'm taken

to a room with a view of nature.

I moved from living in caves

to small dwellings,

then villages,

and now cities.

Cities, magnificent examples of my power

and evolution.

For centuries, they've helped me develop my skills

as a scientist, artist, doctor, entrepreneur.

But life in the big city, more than ever,

is taking its toll on me.

(bus honking)

[Voiceover] And the kind of lifestyles

that we've gotten into where we're continuously stimulated

keeps us in a state of continuous autonomic

nervous system overdrive.

(rushing, impending music)

This has a terrible effect on the body.

And we know that just about every disease,

every illness that there is

has a relationship to stress.

(cars honking)

[Voiceover] Just a few minutes on a crowded street

has a negative impact on my memory and attention.

And many of our buildings now are very alien

and separated from the natural world.

The average office worker works in a windowless environment.

(phone ringing)

They may think it's functional to have just a desk

and a computer and an assignment.

But those windowless environments,

people are less productive.

They're less motivated.

They have higher morale problems.

There's greater absenteeism.

That's not productive over the long haul.

[Voiceover] Having my lunch break in the wilderness

isn't usually possible,

so if I can't go to nature

why not bring nature to me?

We want to create spaces that will motivate people,

that will satisfy them and bring them pleasure

where they'll be most productive.

They not only have to be efficient

and have recyclable materials and be non-toxic,

but they also have to be affirmative and enriching.

We have to do this with our manufacturing facilities.

We have to do it with our schools.

We have to do it with our homes

and residential facilities and apartments.

All these need to incorporate this experiential need

to affiliate with nature.

[Voiceover] The times that I need nature the most

is when I'm grieving.

After 9/11, New York parks and botanical gardens

had record numbers of visitors.

(somber music)

Nature, for many people, is a sacred place.

And for all the churches and mosques and temples

that exist in this world,

often when people are mourning

and feeling isolated and feeling just plain bad,

what restores them and comforts them

truly is Mother Nature.

[Voiceover] What is the role of nature

in a child's development?

Well, if urban kids are spending

most of their time indoors,

then trends in childhood obesity, stress, and diabetes

are only likely to get worse.

When kids are spending this much time

in the digital world, how can their muscles

and body structure develop normally?

Won't they grow up to be stiff and slouchy?

Not only that, but apparently

they're not as smart as they could be.

Researchers discovered that nature deprivation

negatively impacts the development of the brain

in the early years.

[Voiceover] Children who are deprived of nature

are missing an essential ingredient

that goes into their soul development.

Kids that don't have a sense of awe

and just feeling the exuberance

of being out of doors and free are missing

a major experience of what it's like to be human

early in life.

(upbeat music)

The benefits of children being in nature,

I think, are on many levels from the physicality

of working your muscles and building strength

to the socialization that happens from play

to the sort of creativity that happens

from children's play,

the nervous system relaxation that happens

from being in nature.

Our brains are reacting to nature moment to moment.

This is a whole body experience

that is healing for us, really.

(water splashes)

(laughing)

[Voiceover] We're even starting to move

the classroom outside, knowing that kids learn best

when they're having fun.

[Voiceover] The measure of progress in civilization

has become deeply tied to the assumption

that we can transcend nature.

We might have been dropped from another planet

at a godlike creature that really isn't biological,

really isn't embedded in the natural world

like other species.

The notion of biophilia is that we have

an inherent need to affiliate with the natural world

that has been and continues to be instrumental

in our health and our productivity

and our well-being.

For over 99% of our time on Earth,

we evolved in a natural environment.

[Voiceover] When I'm in nature,

I feel like a better person.

When in nature, I become more caring

and connected to others.

(laughing)

[Voiceover] All humans have an inherent need

to find meaning and purpose in their lives.

We've often historically referred to that

as spirituality, to have a sense that life

has greater value than just being

in an isolated speck of matter,

a moment of time in a vastness of the universe.

[Voiceover] In each day, take one moment

to take one breath and understand that

that breath brings life into our bodies.

And that same breath connects us

to every other human being on this planet,

to all the rest of creation on this planet.

Sometimes the most challenging thing to do

is to sit in silence with ourselves

and to have a place and an opportunity

for us to reflect and reconnect our relationship

with creation and reconnect our relationship

with our own emotions and our own spirit

and own mind and our own bodies

so that we can actually begin to be experiencing

a fulfilled human experience.

[Voiceover] The more we take time to be in touch

with ourselves, to be reflective about our lives,

the more we exercise the muscle

of what's called mindfulness,

which is learning to be able to pay attention

to the stream of thoughts and feelings

and reactions and desires, the more we do that,

the more we're able to bring our best selves

into the world,

the more we're able

to be a positive influence on others.

(wolves howling)

[Voiceover] When I think of all of nature's gifts,

it feels like falling in love.

And what I love, I protect.

When I love, I transform.

And maybe, just maybe,

instead of keeping on this path to self-destruction,

I might break through that evolutionary wall.

(uplifting music)

[Voiceover] There are people in touch with nature.

There are conscious people being motivated by love.

And those people are offering solutions.

So fear is driving towards solutions.

And love is providing solution.

[Voiceover] We are part of this extraordinary story

that's been going on for billions of years.

(water splashing)

And for the first time, we can look back

with self-awareness and say,

"How can we now participate?

"And how can we now take responsibility

"for this planet that we're living upon?"

[Voiceover] Let me tell you what I see.

There are people in action all over the world.

Because nature heals,

the environmental movement is a social justice movement.

[Dayna] It's estimated that over one million

organizations are pursuing nature's protection

and restoration.

This is the largest movement to ever take hold

in the history of human civilization.

When you look from a scientific perspective

and an ecosystem perspective and you're studying it,

you always ask the question,

"What's its role? "What's its function?"

And you begin to see that every species has a role

and multiple roles to play in keeping

the whole system functioning.

But we forget to look at the human role.

So when you turn the lens

and look at what this being, the human being,

how it has been crafted,

all of our functionality, our thinking,

our creativity, our passion, our compassion,

you begin to see

because everything has been adapted by the Earth,

we have been profoundly adapted

by the Earth ecosystem to a high state of intelligence,

a high state of problem solving.

[Brian] The universe took 13.7 billion years

to bring forth this really amazing creature in which

the magnificence of life and of the universe

can come forth.

All of this information we now know about the stars

comes from wondering about the stars.

Wonder then would be so central

to what it means to be human.

It seems obvious to me that one of our roles

is simply to become astonished

with where we find ourselves

and really to praise everything around us.

(uplifting music)

[Voiceover] In the beginning of my life,

some 200 thousand years ago,

I was scared of thunder and creatures of the wild.

So in the last few centuries,

I've tried to tame nature and its creatures.

In a very short time, I've disrupted

billions of years of evolution

and lost myself.

(scrape)

Now I know what I'm searching for.

And I see that I have choices.

When the wind whispers,

I hear nature telling me to follow

if I want to find my way home.

(dramatic music)

(upbeat music)