Adam Bienenstock: It’s not just t- turning off your screen. It’s about properly engaging with other people and connecting to them, and connecting your senses together, and integrating that in play.
Rusty Keeler: Hi, this is Rusty Keeler and you’re listening to the Play Nature podcast where we talk about play, nature, playing in nature and the nature of play. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s have a listen. Hi, Adam.
Adam Bienenstock: Hey, Rusty. Hey. Nice to see you again, man.
Rusty Keeler: Hey,
Adam Bienenstock: great to see you too. Yep. Yeah … jealous of your hair, but the beard, I, I feel like I…
Uh, no, your beard’s probably better too. Man, you are handsome.
Rusty Keeler: No, no. Mm. You got it going on there. T- and the, and the white, the white, the whole white. I was saying you look like Gandalf- … the, the white now. Gandalf the White. Like Gandalf- There you go … the Gray. So have, have you ever thought of growing it, the beard long to- No.
Adam Bienenstock: Never. No. No. Not even once. Yeah. No, I know, I know my limits. This is it. This is what you’re looking
Rusty Keeler: at. It’s good. Well, it’s, it’s a, it’s a complete package that- Thank you … yeah, you- Thank you … you’re working it. You got it. Been working out. Yeah. Well, I’m super excited to have the c- great conversation with you.
For our listeners, we, our paths have crossed many times in the nature play world, and we’ve had lots of fun. And also, you know, we’re, we’re kind of like, uh, partners in the movement- Yeah … to connect kids to nature, so it’s gonna be good. Why don’t I read your bio, and then we- Oh, God … and then we can- This is
Adam Bienenstock: gonna be like going to my own funeral.
Rusty Keeler: Well- Well- … here- … this is, this is what it’s gonna be like
Adam Bienenstock: then. Yeah, this is it. My first wake, Rusty Keeler’s gonna read my obituary.
Rusty Keeler: Uh, I’d be honored.
For the past three decades, Adam has been at the forefront of the movement to authentically connect children to nature. He has traveled globally to collaborate on the creation of over 4,000 natural parks and playgrounds in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Canada and the US, and to teach about the connections between human health, child development, environmental regeneration and play in nature.
His teaching style combines rich data and storytelling with a large dose of irony and sarcasm earned through years of fighting for the obvious. In 2023, Adam stepped down as CEO of Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds to launch the ReNature Foundation, dedicated to funding and creating a forest at every school, and ensuring teachers have the tools and training to use it.
ReNature is currently working with 2,000 public schools in Canada and 2,500 more in the US to make this reality across North America. Adam lives and works at the nexus between natural playground design, soil health, gut microbiome, outdoor education, risky play, and the key role that our senses play in connecting it all together.
Yeah. That was a lot. Yeah. That was a lot. Yeah. And that’s still scratching the surface of this guy’s-
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah … journey. Half those places I’ve been with you.
Rusty Keeler: I know. I know. Uh- It’s funny. I’ve… Yeah, I was on, like, a speaking tour in Australia, I think it was, like, 2017, and one of the stops- Yeah … suddenly there you are, Adelaide.
Adelaide. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, with more, more people in the nature play design community.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Uh, all of us pushing that same rock up the hill.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah. So, so you have been pushing that rock for a while now. You’ve been, you’ve been in this movement.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and then you were one of the first people, like, uh, the “Nature Playscapes” book was, like, one of those books that you looked at and went, “There’s someone who’s actually writing about this stuff, who’s, uh, been thinking about this stuff, and who, uh, who I completely agree with,” so it was like a breath of fresh air, um, seeing that.
But yeah, this has been around for a long time, and I, I, I don’t know about you, but I vacillate between thinking, “Wow, we are making so much progress,” uh, to sort of depths of despair going, “Oh my God, we got so much more work to do. I can’t believe I’m having some of the same conversations that we had, you know, 30 years ago and, and doing the same battles.”
Um- Yeah … it’s, um, it, it’s, it’s, uh… I mean, it… Most of the time, though, I will say I’m pretty optimistic, and I, I do feel currently more optimistic that people are, are, uh, there’s a lot more people involved in this, this industry. Yeah. I don’t even know if we could have called it an industry 30 years ago.
Rusty Keeler: Right. Right. It was just a few, uh, you know, people. Crazy people. Yeah, a few crazy people. Yeah. Yeah. First time I saw you was actually in a dream. I- I remember you saying this- Yes, I re- … and I was
Adam Bienenstock: very nervous.
Rusty Keeler: I know. I remember saying it to you, and you were like, “What the heck?” “Hi, nice
Adam Bienenstock: to
Rusty Keeler: meet you.” Yeah. “You were just
Adam Bienenstock: in a dream of mine.”
Rusty Keeler: Uh, but there you were preaching, uh, by the, like, by the riverside- Mm … under, under a weeping willow. And so, you know, it’s kind of what we’ve, we’ve been doing all these years. So, you know, you were, you were doing it even back then. And, and it is interesting, like you said, like, uh, y- you have that feeling of like, “Wow, we really have come a long way in, in that time.”
Yeah. And, and yet You know, it’s a, when we, when we are saying it to new people, there, that can be hopeful too because it’s like, okay, people are coming online every, you know, every generation there’s more people having ahas and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But, but it, it is like you said, stating the obvious.
Tell us about that. Like w- what, what do you say over and over?
Adam Bienenstock: Oh, I mean, I… There’s no question that when the research that was out there… So I, I was really lucky. I mean, I grew up, my father is known as the father of mucosal immunology, so that means that he studied the gut microbiome and how when your hands are in the dirt, when you’re in a biodiverse environment, how that gets into your gut, what a healthy gut microbiome looks like, and then how that changes the way you think and feel and process stress and anxiety.
And that work was established in the ’60s. Uh, dad was working at, at Harvard when I was born in Boston. And, uh, so, you know, flash forward to today, it’s still the same message, like getting your hands in the dirt, cutting that barrier between real explicit visceral experience in nature is the thing that’s gonna change the way you feel and the way you process and your health and your ability to learn and understand and show empathy, and those things are physically connected through that microbiome.
And that was dinnertime conversation for me when I was growing up. That was normal. Oh. I’m a gardener with an immunologist as a dad and a psychiatrist as a mom, and they’re all the same conversation. So I was kind of- Wow … so what I talk about is exactly that, that the more petrochemical barriers or caps that we put on our land that disconnects people from land is the enemy, and whatever we do has to be about how do we get a stronger and stronger dose of that microbiome, that interaction, that energy transfer between humans and the, the land that we, uh, live symbiotic w- well, that we are trying to live more symbiotically with.
Um- Mm-hmm … I, I think there might be a, a parasitic conversation that we might have to lean in on a little bit in some cases, but as much as possible, that, that symbiotic relationship and how we, we have to nurture one another for our own wellbeing. Um, and I think the line that I like the most is that, uh, you know, I’ve heard a lot of people saying we have to save nature.
I’m like, “Nature’s fine without us.”
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: We can be long gone. I think we need to save ourselves. Like-
Rusty Keeler: Mm …
Adam Bienenstock: nature’s gonna be perfectly happy when we’re all gone, when there are no humans left, and they’ll be like, “Oh, what a relief. Now I can get to work.”
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. T- today we’re recording this on Earth Day.
Yeah. I had that same, same thought of like, yeah, the Earth is like ready to shake us off, like fleas. Yeah. We’re good.
Adam Bienenstock: You know, Mother Nature, totally happy. So yeah, and I do think there’s a piece to that. Some of the things that resonate most right now are, are how we’re living in what’s being referred to as the anxious generation, and Jonathan Haidt’s book on the subject.
Yeah. We’re in his book, one of our projects is in the book. The alternative to spending all of your time on screen is, is not just turning off the screen. There has to be something more compelling that helps people to f- to fight off this sort of dopamine hit that they constantly get off of their screens, and the only way to do that is full sensory engagement, so full- Hmm
uh, sensory integration, and that’s nature. So it’s not just t- turning off your screen. It’s about properly engaging with other people and connecting to them and connecting your senses together and integrating that in play. And, um, so, so yeah, sure, turn off the screens, but what are you gonna do to help people overcome some of the deficits that have been acquired by being on them too much?
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, fascinating thinking about that idea of that Earth, you know, being… I, I, I, I… The word engulfment has been kind of, that’s been one of my thoughts lately of technology engulfing us, but- Mm-hmm … switching to be, to let nature engulf us and, and what- Yeah … and what that feels like. And anybody just knows, like, if you’re engulfed in nature, right, you’re, you’re feeling in tune, you’re feeling connected, you, you realize you are part of something bigger and, you know, it’s, it’s more than just a little dopamine.
I mean, you might be getting lot, you know, probably lots of dopamine, but you’re getting so much more. It feels like such a big body thing compared to just a little zap of, you know- Yeah … the sc- scroll kind of thing.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah, and, and, and for me in that conversation, it’s been what are the building blocks of empathy?
What are the building blocks of community, of connection, of problem-solving, of, um, agency? And these things biologically come back to the same sort of primordial muck that we came from along the edges of the streams and the rivers where the life of, uh, of the entire, uh, natural community came from. So it’s the trees and, but it’s just as much what’s on top of the soil on the edge of the river as it is what was underneath, and how those bugs have evolved.
They’ve evolved with us, and we are completely interdependent upon them. So dealing with the stresses of today, I don’t know how we do this unless we give people the right building blocks. And mentally, people have evolved to require that connection on a biological basis, on an immunological basis, on a psychological basis.
So it’s, it, it’s more than just a… I, I always worry about talking about how we feel in a place, um, as if it is something other than, uh, than real. It’s something ethereal or, or it’s easier to dismiss somehow if it’s not spoken about as a, a scientific biological requirement, uh, for our f- our, our proper functioning.
And, uh- Ah … ’cause then, then we have a reason to make sure that we’re making choices that for the 48 minutes a day that a kid will be outside, which is the average for the eight-year-old across North America, um, are actually getting a medical dose of what’s required. But that means we’re gonna have to build these regenerative living landscapes.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: Otherwise, they don’t get it.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: Especially not the cities, where we’ve capped it all with petrochemicals, whether it’s rubber or artificial turf or asphalt or… It’s all, uh, essentially, uh, petrochemicals.
Rusty Keeler: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, even like the rubber of our s- the soles of our shoes separating us.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
We’re surrounding ourselves in it, so there needs to be at least one place to get the dose. It didn’t matter as much, I think, when you and I were kids. I’ll speak for myself. I mean, it was eight hours a day. I was never at home. Um, I mean, ho- home was a hostile environment that had involved chores. If I just didn’t come home and I went up the creek, then I was good.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah, yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: And everyone was up there. That was where we all hung out. So, um, so that idea of six or eight hours at eight years old by yourself, um, in the muck, that was, was normal, but that would be considered irresponsible in most cities now. So that’s why now we’re down to this 48 minutes of time, and even that’s not, uh, unsupervised.
That’s, uh, that’s usually 100% supervised, so those spaces matter in a different way. The goalposts have moved. It used to make sense for doing these clean, crisp, relatively sterile things because they were just maintenance issues, period. And, and cleanliness was close to godliness, and that was the main thing, so we just went ahead and did it.
Now, now, uh, the science behind it is so compelling, um, that if we don’t do this, it’s, it’s a real problem for their fundamental development. Um, all those stresses are, are having deep effects on their ability to learn, think, problem solve. I need, we need Our society needs our kids to be so good at problem-solving, ’cause we have created a lot of problems.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: Um, so it’s not gonna happen unless, uh, unless we change the way we think about the spaces they interact.
Rusty Keeler: Wow. Wow. So, well, interesting the, the cleanliness idea of like, you know- Mm … people thought, “Okay, well, you know, hand sanitize it and make sure everything’s clean and nice clean- Yeah … flat screens,” and, you know.
Adam Bienenstock: Pandemic was not kind to us on this one. Like, we all learned to be afraid of every single bug. Um, and we stopped really thinking about the science behind it, which was that there are good bugs and there are bad bugs, and it’s not great to clean all of them off, ’cause now you’re dependent on this constant cleaning and sterilization of everything because you don’t have any defenses against the bad stuff.
And, you know, the only place that was safe during the pandemic was outside in nature. That was where you weren’t catching COVID. Still aren’t- Hmm … ’cause you’ve got this positive microbial mucosal loading going on in your lung and in your gut that does battle. Uh, we can’t avoid the positive bacteria, and this sort of broad spectrum sterilization that we were doing, uh, and teaching was the right thing to do.
You know, my immunologist dad was sort of yelling at the radio going, “But wait. Just go outside, roll around in the muck, and this will be a lot better. We will have a much better way of having some natural defenses.” So yeah, I, I prefer, uh, caring for all of God’s creatures to, uh, um, and that would include the bugs in the soil, to the idea of cleanliness is close to godliness, if I had to pick between the two.
Rusty Keeler: Micro-microbiomes are close to godliness.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, uh, it would be part of the caring for all of God’s creatures instead of the, the other side of this, which, which is the, that, that cleanliness one is, is a tough one, ’cause it’s not actually what’s good for people, especially children.
Rusty Keeler: Okay. Well, this is so interesting because, you know, often when we’re, when we’re thinking we want n- natural play spaces for children, and we want loose parts, and we want that freedom, and, and in, in that sense, it’s sort of like a, a mental health kind of thing.
Yeah. Um, and there’s cer- lots of, lots of ar- great arguments in that direction. But you’re saying that this is actually physiological, uh- Oh, yeah … that we need this stuff, that we, that we co-evolved with this, this stuff, and we have to have it. W- what do you mean by that? Like what, what, what is going on?
It’s part of this fundamental
Adam Bienenstock: wiring. Of, of- It’s part of this fundamental wiring. So it turns out that if you… One of the things that my father was studying, uh, was PTSD and the effect of these gut microbiome bugs that come from healthy soil microbiomes, biodiverse environments in particular And he was tracking those specific bugs using giant magnets and MRIs that were very complicated and algorithms, uh, for studying their effect.
And he could track those bugs into the gut, and then track those pathways, mucosal pathways. That’s a bug commuting to a bug, communicating to another bug on its way to your brain, and then s- its effect. So he isolated bugs that had an 87% improvement in the bullying rates amongst… These are anxiety, stress indicators.
Bullying, aggressive behaviors, uh, even injury rates are tied to the, the fact that, uh, we’re not processing stress well. Uh, they’re, they’re really good indicators that we’re not processing stress well. So it turns out that you can actually change those stats through the gut microbiome, and he was doing, at that time, ages ago, uh, tracking rats, and rats that had PTSD, smaller, weaker rats g- being, and aggressive rats, and they would stop eating at a certain point.
And then he could feed them these bugs, and these bugs would change the way they f- they dealt with, uh, PTSD. They got better. And when he figured that out, the pharmaceutical companies basically dumped him for a
Rusty Keeler: fact.
Adam Bienenstock: Ah. Um, so he ended up, for the last part of his career, being funded largely by the US Army, uh, for this work.
Okay. ‘Cause it, it turns out that it had a better effect on PTSD than the current drug formulations.
Rusty Keeler: Wow.
Adam Bienenstock: And this is what we’re inducing in our kids through the anxieties of this age, and the stressors of screen time and, uh, the isolation and the sensory deficit that comes with it, ’cause we’re also peeling back the biologicals, these things that live in the environment that are, that are– been sym- have been symbiotic with mankind since the dawn of mankind.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm. Hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: And the stripping away of those strips away your defenses, your ability to… So to, to, to handle stresses. So we’re seeing, if you talk to any superintendent, I mean, I know you do, we’re seeing this crazy hit. Ask a superintendent or a principal what the most difficult thing is that they deal with every day, and it is bullying, aggressive behaviors, a lack of being able to sit and attend and pay attention, um, attention spans that have dropped to next to nothing.
Parents with the same issues: lack of patience, stress, anxiety, anger. That environment is unbelievably difficult to be a principal in right now, and all of that stuff is exponentially worse than it was even a decade ago And this comes back to the environments that they’re in as a key building block of how you would change their behavior.
At least we’re starting to pull the screens off. The problem is we still don’t have the building blocks in place for them to have that healthy gut microbiome that would change their mucosa, that would change the way they feel. And you can cut the, the vagus nerve, and that communication still happens without our nervous system.
It is literally the bugs talking to the other bugs through your mucosa. Healthy mucosa is a key sort of construct underpinning of, uh, of mental health.
Rusty Keeler: Whoa. Okay. Let’s back up for a second. Sure. This is incredible. Could you describe, when you say bugs, and could you go back to like microbiome for, you know- Yeah
uh, what is that exactly? So, you know, if people are thinking bug talk to bug talk to bug, you’re not talking about- Yeah … you’re not talking about ants and ladybugs.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah, it’s the roly polies. Yeah. Roly…
Rusty Keeler: Oh, but they, they will save the world, roly polies. We know that.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah,
Rusty Keeler: yeah. So
Adam Bienenstock: if you look at what, uh, so if you go to the forest.
Rusty Keeler: Yes.
Adam Bienenstock: The question is: how is that forest there, uh, continually just regenerating itself? Mm-hmm. How… What is that duff layer in the forest made of? What is that thing that is breaking down all of the, the, the stuff that falls from the trees, that grows, the nitrogen that’s fixated from the air in these tiny little nodules in some of those roots that replenishes that, where we have different generations that, of forest that come back.
All of that stuff, if there was a fire, there are things that happen in the forest, and it is that living soil microbiome that sort of brings it all back. It is the mycelium, the fungus. Mm-hmm. It is the mycorrhiza. It is the, the tiny little bacterium that sits in nodules on roots that actually assists in fixating the nitrogen from the air into the soil.
And then it’s these other bugs that then feed on that stuff and eat and decompose all of that duff layer. And that stuff actually has to be active and moving around in, in there in order to produce enough of a breakdown that the plants can actually eat it.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: And then those plants can grow, uh, healthy again.
But the alternative to that is that we just dump fertilizer into the soil, which actually kills off that whole
Rusty Keeler: system. Sheesh.
Adam Bienenstock: And that nitrogen is like, it’s, it’s like pouring, uh, salt into your soil. It, that’s in fact what it is. And it’s a petrochemical process to actually produce this stuff, and then it’s big business.
But now without a living soil microbiome, it actually cannot break down anything on its own because we’ve killed off that whole thing.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: Well, it turns out that all that stuff that’s alive, that’s creating that compost, that’s breaking down those various different chunks of organic matter into something that that plant can now feed on, that same stuff is important for our gut microbiome ’cause it changes our mucosa and changes the way our brains work through the gut-brain connection through that mucosa.
It also works through the, the lung, uh, through mucosal loading so it floats in the air in these areas. Hmm. So that’s the stuff that I’m talking about, that tiny little stuff. And it’s also the stuff that does 60% of the drought resistance for that forest. It does 60% of the carbon capture in the forest, not the stuff on the top, not the leaves, but the actual soil microbiome is the stuff that’s capturing most of the carbon, more than above.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: So- Hmm … if we’re gonna have… It turns out, of course, what I, you end up saying, you start realizing the, for me, the aha moment is that the, the, the climate solution i- is the same solution. Uh, it’s, it’s why we ended up in, in, um, you know, building regenerative forests and why we founded, uh, our, our own national charity, uh, Renature, is because out of all of the work that I’ve done, the most important stuff has been planting enough of a forest at a school within the fence with all of the components required for that regenerative soil, that living soil microbiome, so that those kids can go outside and play in a forest as part of their every day, not have to go on a field trip to some exotic place outside of the school, but to do it there.
And that seems to have a better effect on those children than, um, and on their wellbeing than simply putting just a playground in, and especially if that playground’s sitting on
Rusty Keeler: a,
Adam Bienenstock: a artificial petrochemical-based surface. Yes. Um- Yes … and so it’s all about that regenerative soil. How big a forest do you need?
What do you need to seed this with? What are the, the basic, uh, components of a living soil microbiome so that it can waft its way back into our system through the air just by having it on our fingers, through our skin when we’re picking up stuff, and then put it… Actually, literally, we lick our fingers, we touch our face.
When those things happen, it changes the, the gut microbiome for the better, and it sets them up for all kinds of improvements in their health. There’s all kinds of immunological studies on this. Uh, one of my favorites, uh, one called the Helsinki Alert, a whack of immunologists getting together to say that, uh, nature deficit disorder is real
Rusty Keeler: Mm.
Adam Bienenstock: On this biological level.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: Mm-hmm.
Rusty Keeler: That it’s not just fun to have nature or beautiful or, you know, stimulates creativity, but that health-wise, like for our bodies, for our body’s best health, our heart, minds, spirits, the phys- physicality of us- Mm-hmm … like we need that stuff. That stuff is, is medicine for us.
The- Yeah … that we grow with it, and that the forest isn’t, it’s not just the trees, that, uh, this is fascinating, that it’s, you know, that soil. We don’t often think about s- wait, soil is filled with, you know, it’s like a whole other layer- Alive … layer of life.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Yeah. It’s alive. And we are not even close to understanding it fully.
Yeah. But those communities all coexist within these living regenerative soils, and, uh, and, and are kind of this, this sort of fundamental requirement that the indigenous people of North America or around the world, this has philosophically been their, um, the, the Buddhists around holistic medicine, this conversation has been part of the ethos of those cultures, whether it’s the, uh, Aborigine or the Maori or Paiute, Mohawk, Cree, Squamish, uh, Musqueam, Kwakwaka’wakw, all of the communities that I have felt like some of my proudest work has been to learn from these people.
And now with, uh, Kanesatake and Oka, uh, on a community health center that we’re working on together, um, the understanding of that connection between land and people is fundamental to their way of life and their culture. Uh, and what’s dawned on me is that every single culture is defined by their relationship with the land.
Yes. And this has been an understanding for as long as humans have existed. But we’ve worked awfully hard in the last few decades to cut off that visceral connection. And the only way back, in my mind, is to build back those connections and that vector where, uh, where we can interface, and the sooner the better in the lives of, uh, uh, of humanity, um, if we’re gonna- Absolutely
if we’re gonna have something to base the solutions to our biggest problems on.
Rusty Keeler: That’s incredible. So the id- this is really fascinating. Okay, so, you know, as a person who believes in children and nature play, and then for all of us, and I know for my- myself, my, my own health, and, you know, we’ve been sort of hearing it, you know, the Reader’s Digest version of like Gardening is good for you, and dirt on your hands is good, and, you know, it’s kind of flipping the, the cleanliness idea.
But this is, it is kind of blowing my mind, that idea of like when I think about like the top, you know, six, eight, 10 inches of like the forest, the soil, the forest floor. And, you know, I’ve, I have brother-in-laws that are scuba divers, and we often talk about like, you know, here we all are on land living our lives and, you know, society and all that.
But beneath the water, it’s a whole other, it’s like another planet. And it’s all these communities, and it’s all this, you know, there’s drama and there’s, you know, all this stuff, generations. And so this is like the same thing of, of the soil. Like underneath our feet in the forest floor, there is a rich society of, of things int- intertwined and connected and, and, you know, you were saying kind of the all, all the different, you know, cultures had connections to Earth.
Yeah. And seeing, seeing that we’re, we’re a part of Earth and, and we are, we have our place in it. But just thinking about even if we defocus and knowing that we are of, that we are of the Earth, we’re made of the Earth. The Earth’s- Of course … made for us, and it, it… everything really is intertwined. And so we– this is fascinating to me that we need it on a, like it’s part of our, like our body, the Earth’s body, Mother Earth.
You know, it’s, it’s no joke.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. No, I mean, and, and the science is the last thing to catch up. It’s not like the science is new. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, these theologies have been in place forever. I mean, th- literally have, have grown with humankind, these connections, this understanding of that connection. It’s fundamental to, to every being on the planet.
And it’s when you break the connections that things start to die off and things get to have shorter lifespans. I mean, right now we’re in this grand terrible age where our children will have shorter lifespans than us. It’s the first time we’ve gone in reverse.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: And, and it, it is completely tracked against, in my mind, it’s tracked against our connection to land and the connection between land and people, that vis- I’m not saying that you can’t do digital.
I’m just saying for at least an hour a day- Mm-hmm … we’re hardwired to require this. And there’s a difference between ser- seed and fertilizer. What I mean by that is, um, seed is the gut microbiome that you inherit from your parents. Seed is what you put into your body, those new bugs that you put into your body when you’re very, very young That are fundamentally changing the way your immune system works for the rest of your life, changing your ability to process foods for the rest of your life, your ability to process, uh, uh, allergic reactions, certain cancers, uh, s- uh, diabetes.
You know, there’s, there’s one study that showed that type one diabetes, a better predictor of type one diabetes than food when you’re 30 is soil and gut microbiome before you’re five. Wow. Wow. Because how we process those inputs is fundamentally, um, a, a symbiotic relationship between those bugs in your gut that are munching away at all that stuff.
So how you pros that, process this, it changes the way you deal with your entire life physically from that point forward. And all of that stuff was really obvious to, and with, with traditions and cultures and, and with similarities amongst people from other parts of the world that had no way of knowing, had no paths that intersected.
You know, these theologies with indigenous people have, uh, uh, have existed forever. So we’re just catching up on the science. But that said, this has been pretty obvious for the last 30 years, uh, 40 years. These scientific studies around this stuff go back that far. But there has been a sudden, uh, a pickup of this.
And I, I think the way science has been done in the past, and this is maybe one of the positive things about AI, I just gave a talk at the Soil Biodiversity, the Global Soil Biodiversity Conference, uh, in Victoria, uh, last week, and these are people who know ev- the name of every one of those bugs in the soil.
Rusty Keeler: Uh-huh.
Adam Bienenstock: But they haven’t spent time talking to the people who are studying every one of those bugs in your gut. Mm. Or understanding that that next piece, there’s, there’s a focus on how to keep those communities on that thin sliver of a crust on the planet alive. Uh, but very few people talking about how those communities are changing your gut and your immune system.
I just, I got lucky. I got, I just happened to be- Born into a wacky family where that’s all we talked about Yeah, yeah … growing up, you know? So I better be building these landscapes that actually produce that effect. Otherwise, you know, I, I can’t just be building a garden. That’s not, that’s not good enough.
So- Yes … I ended up building organic gardens using the stuff that my dad was studying. It was all intertwined, uh, mental health, physical health, immune system health, drought resistance, uh, water retention, carbon capture, uh, thriving, um, uh, gardens that grow five times the speed of the others that other people were building.
All of that’s tied together to the same bunch of bugs, the same bunch of bacteria and fungi.
Rusty Keeler: Incredible. Incredible. So you then take– You folded that into your y- like a mission, a, a life mission here- Yeah … with, with building these spaces and thinking about children to have them.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the, uh…
We, we put out, you know, a free, uh, beginning of the pandemic, there’s caution tape. You remember this time. There’s caution tape around every single playground in North America at one point. Yeah. Yeah. Not a great day for two playground guys. No. Um, but, uh, you know, what do you do? Uh, but we had been building outdoor learning environments specifically, and we shifted, and we, we, we o-opened outdoorclassrooms.com, and we started to put them out into the pu- into the ether, into the public for free.
Uh, who would like one was the question. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we went through a learning model and tried to figure it out through Meta and Google and analytics and everything else. So we did like a social push. And, um, in the first two and a half months of offering outdoor classrooms with a forest for free, uh, we had 10 and a half thousand applications- Oh, really?
for outdoor classrooms at public schools- Yeah, yeah … across North America.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: Which, which is bonkers. Like, it’s impossible.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. That’s kind of whittled down to which principals are willing to sign a contract with their facilities manager saying that, “If we can fund this, will you allow us to come and give it to you?”
Uh, and that was the, the underpinning of, uh, of Renature, which was to figure out how to do this. And the most important part of that is not a playground, sadly. Mm-hmm. It is, uh, a, as a, as a playground guy Um, what we’re discovering is that the bulk of that effect… Now, putting a playground into it, now you got special sauce and something amazing.
Rusty Keeler: Sure.
Adam Bienenstock: But the fundamental first piece has to be that regenerative forest that doesn’t require us working on it over and over and over again. So how do you produce the kind of soil from these inert surfaces that are in most schools to make them fully alive so that they can help that forest grow and survive?
And then we can put an outdoor classroom into it, and then we can start to talk about a playground and all those other great things, but the most important piece is that. And, uh, unfortunately now it’s also a piece, uh, the other piece of that Renature, uh, Foundation is to, to provide the mentorship for teachers, and I know you do this all the time, how to get teachers to understand how to bring their kids outside, because we have an entire generation who did not live the way I lived that are teaching now.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: Mm-hmm. So it has to go along with mentorship for the teacher or mentorship for the, for the facilities manager, which is mostly, “Please don’t come here and mess this up.” Don’t show up with your weed eater. Just let the weeds grow. Like, please.
Rusty Keeler: That’s right. That’s
Adam Bienenstock: right. Um, but that requires education.
And- Yeah … so we’re part education, but, but, um, the fundamental first step is building a forest.
Rusty Keeler: That’s it. That’s it. So that’s amazing. So just- Yeah … a couple things here. So, so that’s kind of a pivot, um- Yeah … from just thinking natural playgrounds, we’re gonna do, you know, connect kids to nature in that way, this is diving deep into your history, your, your, the, the knowledge that you grew up with and this, the, the know- the ancient knowledge that, you know, we are connected to these microbiomes, we are connected to the soil and the, you know, the prairies and the, you know, that stuff is, is in us, and we need that for health.
We need that for mental health, physical health. That has, it affects our lives. Yeah. Yeah. Child- chil- children are cut off from that And so the idea of like, what if we’re just growing that? A- and the idea of schools too, I mean, especially if you think about like, you know, not– Some children are lucky and they have little, uh, bits of nature near their, near them, or they have a backyard, or they’re near something, depending on how often they go out to it.
Yeah. But just like, just like thinking about sort of supporting play, where are the children? They are at schools, and schools often have land. And so the idea of like switching the thinking to say, “Wait, we want to create these places at schools.” And, and forests, the pivot to a forest, I, I think that is really fascinating.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Yeah. It, it– Now I gotta give a shout-out to someone we both know, Sharon Danks.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I was gonna bring her up. Green Schoolyards America. I mean- Yeah. Yep … “
Adam Bienenstock: Asphalt to Ecosystems” was a pivotal book. Yeah. Uh, as well as yours. And she has been unbelievably influential in, um, in this world, um, di- doing amazing work across the US and, and, uh, in California.
And- Yeah … and I– She’s, she’s certainly one of my heroes- Yeah … uh, on this. Me too. So- Me too … my work around scale on this is, you know, how efficiently can we produce this? What are the fundamental repeatable steps? And there is a whole other world of how do we ensure that in a warming climate, where we know it’s gonna be plus two, three degrees Celsius over the next 50 years, which trees are the right trees?
It’s not as simple as just what grew here before is what we’re gonna plant now. We have to be thinking in terms of regeneration, even how you plant that forest. There’s a horticultural piece to this, where you have to be planting the things that will grow here in this climate but will survive-
Rusty Keeler: Yes …
Adam Bienenstock: this added heat in 50 years.
So what’s the point of doing all of this if it’s all gonna croak in the next 20?
Rusty Keeler: Yes.
Adam Bienenstock: Um, that succession of trees. I mean, if you look at the, the images of, uh, there are maps, interactive maps, so you can see over the, over the, over millennia. You watch the borders of different types of forests, and they move all over North America.
The Ice Age comes down and pushes that forest lower, and through the generations, the seeds at the southern end of those all. And then the ice retreats, and now it starts to go back up north again, and, and you watch all of these forests move around the world, move around North America on these maps.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: And you realize that used to happen over millennia. It’s not like those trees and those forests walked there. They grew- Yeah … lived their entire lives and died, and the next one would be literally millennia- Yeah … that they grew. Yeah. Well, now those changes are happening in 10, 15 years. So it’s not gonna happen through natural process.
We are going to have to supplement a succession plan. And so part of this is also a climate conversation. What are we gonna do to produce shade? I look at most of the schools-
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm …
Adam Bienenstock: and most of the trees that they have are outside of the fence- Yep … and they’re shading the sidewalk or the parking lot.
Yep. And I’m sorry, I don’t care. I don’t care about the sidewalk. I don’t care about the cars, whether they got nice shade.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: We gotta start planting those forests inside the fence if we’re gonna have any of this effect, and we have to start to think about field trips in their own playgrounds, in their own schoolyards, as opposed to field trips meaning that you’re going offsite.
And that’s these little doses that they can get all day long for loading. And then there’s a whole other world of what do you need to produce at scale in order to plant these trees at scale and have them survive the impact of all those little kiddos, and the compaction that goes along with that. So we’ve ended up now, um, building a biochar, uh, uh, production facility- A what?
uh, specifically to, to help, um, with the soil microbiome. So we’re producing now some of the, at, at some scale, some of the key ingredients for, uh, the living soil microbiomes that are gonna help these communities of bugs survive. Oh,
Rusty Keeler: wow. And all of that
Adam Bienenstock: started with just wanting to have kids play.
Rusty Keeler: Oh my God.
So like a nursery for the bugs and for the soil. Exactly. So
Adam Bienenstock: there’s, and then there’s what, what is the housing for this? So there’s this really cool stuff that’s been in the ground for hundreds and hundreds of years called biochar. And this is ancient wisdom again. Um, it is essentially, eh, ish, charcoal, and there’s activated or charged biochar, and you take that charcoal, those chunks of that stuff that would’ve come from maybe some of the offcuts of some of the stuff that we, uh, we produce on the playground side, um, out of, out of logs that are, are, are, uh, being sustainably harvested.
Um, and it captures that carbon for hundreds of years, and it creates little air pockets, and it is a perfect matrix in these little pockets of biochar, um, for maintaining the aeration of the soil, but also for, for charging with all those bugs, all of that mycelium and mycorrhiza and, and, uh, bacterium. Um, that community can be charged into biochar, and that will sit in those soils and regen- and help to regenerate those soils, uh, along with mulch and duff layer that, uh, that allows that for the next 100 years to survive quite well without a facilities manager having to get, uh, uh, involved.
So- Wow … so we’re seeing that that In order for us to do this, we at, at scale, we’re gonna have to also scale the production of some of the ingredients that go along with this that, that also happen to capture carbon for longer as well, so. Yeah. There’s this whole other world of, okay, fine, we’ve said we get it, this is what we gotta do.
So what’s missing? What are the ingredients that are not possible for us to get hold of right now? And, uh, so that, that is, uh, one of the, one of the key pieces for us if we wanna organically produce the sort of air pockets and, um, charged microbiome, uh, in those soils for the regenerative forest. Yes. Yes.
Okay. Sorry, I’m geeking out. No, no. That… Yeah, me too. Me too. I, I’m a total geek on this stuff. I love-
Rusty Keeler: Yeah … how
Adam Bienenstock: complex and simple this is at the same time.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. W- well, what if we, if we back up again, I keep … Back up, like, okay, so, you know, we’re often, you know, I’m of- often encouraging people just to plant a tree, you know?
Yeah. We think about the places of planting a tree, or schools think we’re gonna plant a few trees, or they- Yep. Yep … put in a new playground and they plant some trees around it. And please, listener, keep doing that, right? Like- No, don’t, don’t stop. Do it now … just keep, keep, keep… Uh, but this is a whole different thing, th- the idea of a forest and the layers and that regenerator- regenerative idea of soil and our connection to it.
Yeah. But also forest. When we, uh, uh, in some ways, you… For the listeners thinking, “Well, we’re gonna plant a f- how do you plant a forest?” But in some ways it’s like a forest is almost in quotes. Um- Yeah. Because it- Yeah, yeah … it’s not like we’re talking about huge, huge, you know, schools don’t have that, that much territory really.
Um, but it’s like you’re thinking where you’re gonna create these small… To a kid, it’s a forest. To a preschooler- Yeah … it feels like a forest that goes on forever. But it’s, that’s this idea of more than just planting trees.
Adam Bienenstock: And I think we’re, we have to… So the problem with planting a single tree inside that fence is that it’s, it’s, it’s gonna die, and it, it’s gonna be loved to death by those kids.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: That single tree. And you’re gonna see all the roots exposed and they’re just gonna … They’re- Yeah … ’cause they’re gonna be on it all the time. That’s not to say don’t plant that tree, it’s that we have to do more, ’cause they operate in a system. And Sharon, uh, Danks refers to this as a forest system, not just a forest.
Ah,
Rusty Keeler: that’s good. Yes.
Adam Bienenstock: A system. And, and I… And it is a system. It’s, it is the living soil microbiome. If you want to I mean, the kids are wired to wanna be around that tree. That’s why it, it, it’s why it ends up dead. It is being loved to death.
Rusty Keeler: Yes.
Adam Bienenstock: So the answer is not less trees, the answer is a whole bunch more.
And in a system with some that are nitrogen fixators and some that are feeding off that, and some that are feeding from each other, and some that communicate with each other through their roots in tandem with this living soil microbiome and help each other to grow and to survive, will even transfer energy to one another if one of them gets injured, and will take less energy and push it into the other tree as little forests of, um, of poplar, uh, will do or cottonwoods will do.
I mean, so that stuff to me is fascinating. Yeah. That’s the horticulture side of me, which is actually the only thing I’m qualified for, is the horticulture side. That’s what my, my, uh, um, my post-secondary education was in.
Rusty Keeler: Huh.
Adam Bienenstock: And so I, I, I think it’s fascinating to think about those systems. Yeah. So how much do you need?
How many trees? How much square footage is, is required in order to create those things that they can go and play in there- Yeah … and I know it’s all gonna be okay, that they’re gonna be able to live together, those kids, those trees, that soil microbiome, and interact in a way that’s healthy for all of them.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. So, so what is- There’s kind of a minimum footprint for this Yeah. What is it? What is it? What is, what do these forests, quote, quote, what do they look like? How big, yeah, how big are they? What’s in them? What’s planted? So we’re
Adam Bienenstock: starting to, to settle in on 1,000 square meters, 10,000 square feet, 50 trees as a, uh, base model.
Okay. As a skeleton that I can, uh, from there, we can put an outdoor classroom in there, we can put some rotten logs in there, we can put some duff layer. We’re working with school boards across, uh, uh, Canada and now into the US as well, um, where that’s the primary function, is how do we get that forest alive within the fence?
You have to start to look at, okay, how many square feet do they actually have in their yard? You need to think about how many kids they’ve got at that school, and whether you can actually be successful within their fence.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: And we’re, we’ve kind of landed on, on, on average, these are 10,000 square feet and 50 trees, and, uh, there’s an outdoor classroom in the middle of it, and there’s, there’s a, a, a duff layer that’s, uh, at a certain depth, and there’s all this stuff sitting in the soil that’s charged biochar.
And if you do that, then it doesn’t need special attention. It doesn’t need cages and guy wires and all of that to hold them up for the first however many years.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: Or to keep people from touching it until it establishes to a certain size. We can just have it stand and support each other, and change the patterns of behavior of the kids so that they’re more symbiotic and sympathetic to the landscape.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a process that we have been involved in for a while, and I find that there is something so similar to how we work with, with kids to, to change the way they behave in response to a new landscape. You know, I know for you, Rusty, you think about the topographic change, the type of plant material, the path of travel and how we get them to move in one direction or the other, the gathering spaces, the social spaces, the places for gross motor, but the places also, and for risk, and then the places also for social and fine motor and, and loose parts.
You consider all of those things when you’re designing.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: Um, it’s similar when we’re thinking about that, that community of trees and shrubs that support that stuff. There’s this whole other social strata and various different things that have to happen that, that we have to apply to it. So I’m, I’m fascinated by how that works in natural systems without kids, and then how those kids impact those systems.
I have always thought of it first through the lens of what’s best for the kids. Now I’ve kind of got these dual paths, what’s best for the, for the earth and for that forest, and how will it negatively or positively affect the kids, and how will the kids negatively or positively affect the natural system.
So what do I have to do for both in order to get there? Yeah. I end up mentoring teachers and mentoring, uh, and, and playing with kids as much as I end up mentoring facilities managers, uh, and, and playing with the soil microbiome. Mm-hmm. They’re parallel courses now. Mm-hmm.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm. Amazing. Uh, do you have a favorite, when you think of the school forest projects that, you know, that you’re involved in, is there, is there a, you know, d- a visual what it’s like for us in- Yeah.
Yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah. You know, there are for sure. There– And there’s favorite clients who, who seem to understand that. So our conversations with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Canada have been fascinating and, um, ar- around taking a, a forest that’s pretty depleted and turning it into something remarkable and adding play to it and doing that sort of full version for acres.
Um, and in the US, I think working with Zion National Park on the new discovery center to build a regenerative forest where it once stood, and a discovery center for the national park on the east entry. It’s the sort of last new discovery center for a relatively barren entrance to a national park, to one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever been.
We have the privilege of working there with the Paiute and with the National Park System and with the rancher who owns the land, um, and the, and the charitable entity that’s accepted the land and is now managing that, that group. I think that connection, that complicated connection and social structure that comes out of the place like that at Zion with that deep, rich natural history-
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm
Adam Bienenstock: is, is a fascinating thing to mix with the, the soil microbiome and the regenerative forest that gets rebuilt there, that once stood there proudly before it was sort of logged out and turned into- Mm … uh, ranch, ranch land. Yeah, so I, I, I’m, I’m more fascinated by the fu- the ones of the future, the ones that are, that we’re gonna save.
There’s a small project in British Columbia at a school where we’re building a whole regenerative forest that is right now so depleted. There’s another in Silicon Valley in, um, at Nueva School that we’re working with that is fascinating. 33 acres of old growth forest in San Francisco and Silicon Valley that’s, um, just years of, of being almost taken for granted because it was so lush, but incrementally has become less lush, and how do we bring that back, uh, with play at its core?
Um, I find that stuff just fascinating. And, uh, but the, the most rewarding and biggest impact I’ll have in my life is gonna be building these forests at public schools for people who can’t afford it. No, no question. That’s the, that, that’s the most impactful work of my life.
Rusty Keeler: So you’re helping to fund.
You’re bringing funding to-
Adam Bienenstock: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, so we’re doing it in several ways. Wow. Wow. Some of the projects from the business, um, help to fund this. Okay. Uh, when we’re putting in logs, we oblige through the budgeting process our clients to pay for a seven-to-one replacement of any tree that came down. Um, even though the trees that we’re bringing to this are mostly urban forestry where the trees were already coming down, we’re saving it from the chipper, saving it from becoming firewood.
Mm-hmm. But that said, uh, we’re forcing them to, to do that. And for the most part, people tend to plant them at their own place. But a lot of that seven-to-one becomes part of the Renature program, where it gets donated back and funds these regenerative forests. And now I spend my time running around trying to figure out how we’re gonna get corporate and government support so that we can do more.
Uh, the demand is there. There is zero question that the demand is there. Yeah. It is, it is thousands of, uh, schools that have contacted us that are… And it’s overwhelming Because there’s no way currently that I have that could fund all of it. Um, but it’s a, you know, it’s an interesting, you know, little, uh, mathematical problem to figure out.
And, uh, and it’s starting to gain some momentum, and I’m, you know, proud to say that we’re, we’re into the hundreds now of schools that we’re directly, uh, scheduling, um, and starting to buy in some serious bulk when it comes to the number of trees and the types of trees and the areas we get to work with.
And school boards are starting to help with some of the funding now. So I, I see- Yeah … I see a real future in
Rusty Keeler: it. Yeah. For sure. That is incredible. Um, I just saw that recently that there is a new bill, um, in the United States federal government revitalizing America’s schoolyards. Yeah. That it, that could have…
Would that be a effect on your, on this movement? Would that be helpful? No, I would hope
Adam Bienenstock: so. Yeah. Yeah, I would hope so. I mean, I, I think the, the best work, I, I would, I can’t, you know, I, there’s no way I can take credit for, like, coming up with this as if it’s something new when most of that heavy lifting was done by, um, Sharon Danks and who I’ve been sort of proud to be a friend of for a long time.
Yeah. Um, I drank the Kool-Aid, and I’ve watched that legislation flow through and think some of the things that you’re seeing now are all based upon that model that she’s developed with CAL FIRE for planting forest systems at, uh, at schools.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. And
Adam Bienenstock: really thinking about what works and what doesn’t work.
You know, I, I, I think, uh, there are more and more people, more and more organizations starting to jump on board, uh, to do this. So I, I don’t think that we’ll be the only ones. And, you know, I would love to be able to find that with something like that legislation, there’s gonna be funding that follows, but I’m a realist.
Yeah, yeah. No way am I– And I am impatient. You know this about me. I am not a patient man. Uh-huh. Uh, so, you know, let’s, let’s, uh- Good. Good … uh, so it’s just, you know, it’s a, it, it’s full speed ahead to try to figure out, you know, not how we pick off one more, but how we pick off another hundred. I think about it- Yep
in my, in increments of 100 schools that couldn’t afford this without us doing it. Yeah. Do you wanna know where the schools are that have the least amount of money? You just look on a map and look where the least number of trees are, ’cause that’s the impoverished areas across the United States. Mm-hmm.
If they’re treed, generally speaking, that’s the wealthy areas.
Rusty Keeler: Hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: So I don’t believe that the work of Renature is to help with that. The work of Renature is to, is to help where it’s the lowest quartile For per capita, um, income and for per capita canopy. Um, so that’s, that’s where the work is.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that’s beautiful. So important. Um, people can find out about renature.org.
Adam Bienenstock: Yep.
Rusty Keeler: You know, if there’s elementary schools that wanna sign up, the hundred c- keep, the next hundred, get, get on the list there. How about just to end, for people that might not be elementary schools, but that- Yeah, yeah … are digging this idea and want to do a rich, quote unquote, “forest,” even in their small preschool, even in their backyard- Yeah
what w- what do you suggest? What are some just- Yeah … tips? Yeah. I mean, I think- Ideas …
Adam Bienenstock: um, so first, uh, I mean, our work, while we do elementary schools, just to be clear, it’s up to grade 12, so this is all for JK to 12. Um- Okay. Yeah … but- Great … in the- Oh, gotcha … um, for someone that wants to do this, I don’t think it needs to be as complicated as what I’ve just explained.
Mm-hmm. Uh, you wanna get a bit of organic material into the soil, and you wanna plant a group of trees. And, uh, if you… Or a group of multi-stemmed shrubs. If it’s in your backyard, multi-stemmed shrubs that are six feet tall- Mm-hmm … are freaking awesome.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm. And
Adam Bienenstock: a clump of those is a whole world for your kids.
As simple as a clump of serviceberries or a clump of, uh, a, a pussy willow. Um, these things will change the way your children play. But a group of them instead of a single one, and multi-stemmed, not lollipops, ’cause we want to deliver the experience to them where they can touch and feel. Fruiting better.
Rusty Keeler: Mm-hmm.
Adam Bienenstock: You know, uh, smelly better, even it smells gross. Awesome. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There’s a Crataegus tree that smells like death that I l- I think it… Kids freak out about how cool that is that it smells like death.
Rusty Keeler: Yeah.
Adam Bienenstock: But- It attracts flies for pollinators. You got it. Yeah. You got it. Yeah. And, uh, I think that, uh, that the more sensory that experience, the better.
So if you have a corner somewhere, um, in your yard, at your school, in your neighborhood, that’s, that’s where I’d go. Think of planting little communities and adding the organic material into the soils at the same time that you’re planting this stuff. And, uh, the time to do it is today. Uh, you know- Yes
we’re, it, it’s not, there is no … We, we may not know everything, but we sure know enough to act. Yeah. So yeah, the time to do it is earlier. Faster the better.
Rusty Keeler: Yes. Get it in the ground. Yeah Now Yeah. The rest of it’ll come Now. Yes. Oh my gosh. Well, Adam, thank you so much. This is so inspiring, and then awe-inspiring to, you know, see the big picture and the, you know, the, the planet and our place in it, and the microbiomes, the communities- Yeah
the com- communities we’re part of, and how all this work can help, help the different crises that, you know, childhood is find itself in, and help, help soothe, help soothe hearts and, and minds and, and build bodies, and, and be beautiful and make oxygen, and yeah, really make a difference in the world. And when we think about the footprint of, of, of- My
Adam Bienenstock: dad would be happy
Rusty Keeler: your dad would be very happy. Yeah. Uh, yeah. You’ve translated it. Yeah, I mean, there it is, like putting it in practice- Yeah … in, in a, in a big way. And, and you’ve been doing that for so many years, and I think about the footprint of these forests, but I also think about the footprint of, of your life and the- Yeah
the, all the places and spaces that you’ve had an effect on, and people’s hearts and ideas. And it’s an incredible, an incredible legacy, and I’m so excited that it’s going full power. You’ve been a big part of that
Adam Bienenstock: journey for me, man. I gotta tell you. Oh. Uh, without your, your push into this and helping to sort of define that, I mean, each of us have done, you know, this, the, the…
For me, I think the, the work, the written piece was most important, was the systematic literature review on, on risky play. Mm. And, and all of this is a continuum, so I, I, uh, I really appreciate you, man- Oh … uh, for, for the drive and for keeping this all at the top of people’s minds. It, uh, it matters.
Rusty Keeler: Yay. Thank you.
Thank you. And, and all the work that the pe- the listener, the listeners are doing out there too. We’re all, we’re all in it together, and we all have a, a role to play, and we’re all making it- It’s an army, man. There’s an army … all… It’s true. It’s true. All right. Thanks for being here. Thanks, man. Look forward to hanging out next time.
Adam Bienenstock: Yeah, yeah. Look forward to seeing you somewhere.
Rusty Keeler: All right. Thanks for listening. Do you have a comment or a question? Email me at playnaturepodcast@gmail.com. You know I like talking about this stuff, and maybe we could use your question on a future podcast episode. As always, I have some free goodies for you in the show notes, including my outdoor loose parts guide.
Fun stuff in there. And so I wish you the best in your outdoor play adventures. And when it comes to adding nature to your yard Or loose parts, or saying yes to risky play. My favorite motto is dream big, start small, and never stop. Oh yeah. Woo, woo, woo, woo. Let’s do it. All right. Have fun out there.
