Biosphere 2, a massive indoor simulation of the Earth’s ecosystem in southern Arizona, is one of the most famous — and infamous — experiments in modern science.
In 1991, eight people calling themselves “Biospherians” sealed themselves inside for two years, in an attempt to see if an environment built from scratch could support human life.
The project became an international sensation — and a source of controversy. Among other things, the group realized Biosphere 2 could not produce enough oxygen. Extra oxygen was eventually smuggled in to keep the experiment going — and the secrecy around that and other struggles ultimately damaged the project’s credibility.
But one of the original Biospherians has long held that those perceptions miss the point of the project. Mark Nelson has written many books about his Biosphere experiences, including “Irrationals in Hope of the Impossible,” which tells the story of the project’s origins.
To understand Biosphere 2, he says, you have to go back to a blighted ranch in New Mexico in the late 1960s. It was called Synergia Ranch, and it was many things: a utopian commune, an attempt to build a new framework for society and culture, and the home of an avant-garde theater company — the Theater of All Possibilities.
As Nelson told The Show recently, he arrived at Synergia Ranch when he was 22, with the goal of figuring out not just who he was, but who he was capable of becoming.
Full conversation
NELSON: I was really interested in the new. And I really, even at that point, I'm 22 years old, and I don't want to just tick one of the boxes, become a lawyer, a doctor, a fire chief. I wanted to become a real, complete human being.
A lot of New Age people at the time were getting in various bubbles. That's why we always kind of resisted. We're not hippies. We don't consider this counterculture. I mean, is there culture? Is there a Western civilization? You know, let's do something new.
DINGMAN: That is one of the things I found most interesting about this backstory is that you arrive at the ranch and find yourself inducted into this avant-garde theater company that wasn't just doing ambitious productions. But you had multiple hours of acting class several times a week at least.
NELSON: No, it was Saturday and Sundays. ... The wonderful thing — and if people get nothing else — the idea that you can simultaneously or concurrently be working in theater or some kind of creative arts thing. Theater is really beautiful because it's by definition, a group endeavor. It's also group therapy at one level. And you could be working on ecology.
We wanted to get back to the fundamentals. So we started with hand-watering our vegetable gardens. And if you're in a Shakespeare play and you got a lot of lines to learn, three hours out there manually shifting your water hose to get all the vegetables properly, watering is a perfect time to work on voice exercises, emotional sequences, Shakespeareans, you know, whatever.
And I have to say, that is so liberating, and it's so rare. I mean, it's really sad that we live in a culture that doesn't even tell people you have the potential to — let's say you're really turned on by something and you specialize in it. Fine. But that doesn't mean that that defines your life.
We all have an artist in us.
DINGMAN: Right, right. Well, give folks an example of kind of the level of vision and dreaming it necessitated when you arrived at the ranch to turn it into what it has now become. I mean, it was a pretty rough-and-tumble place when you got there, right?
NELSON: Ecologically devastated. You know, it's a semi-desert or, you know, dry area. First we started working on rehabilitating this 160 acres of really kind of the worst possible land you could imagine. And then we saw that, well, this is really the challenge in our world. There's been maybe a century or two, the industrial revolution a few hundred years ago, of destruction.
And I think the challenge of our time as the future is going to be to regenerate the ecology. And as we're learning — why I like the inner and the outer being connected — regenerating the world also involves maybe you start with regenerating yourself.
DINGMAN: Right.
NELSON: Here I am, this New Yorker who maybe pushed a lawnmower around the little lawns in front of my house in Queens. You're in charge of gardens and trees. Well, that's brilliant.
And then I started to realize I knew nothing about soil. I didn't know where a tree — really, when you look at a bare root tree, exactly where do you put this in the ground? Where the roots begin? So you start from almost complete ignorance, and then you learn.
DINGMAN: And you, it seems like, really tied the desire to learn with the desire to kind of transform yourself.
NELSON: Yeah, absolutely. I was supposed to become a medical doctor. And so while I was taking pre-med, I was taking philosophy courses at Dartmouth. And the most profound one is a course in Asian philosophy.
And the guy started out by saying: "In the West, you're so obsessed with what is something? Is A A, or is it not A? In Asia, he fundamental question is: What is anything in the process of becoming?" And that's rung with me for forever.
DINGMAN: I realize this is asking you to jump ahead quite a bit in the narrative, Mark, but I want to make sure we get to Biosphere 2. Talk a little bit about what you felt like you were bringing with you from Synergia Ranch into the Biosphere experience.
NELSON: You know, talk about jumping into the unknown with both feet flying on the hopeful. And in theater, it's always like the magic what if. What if I was a prince of Denmark and I find out that my uncle ... ? The magic gift of Biosphere 2 is maybe we could do it.
And yes, our critics were right. It was also the greatest theater piece that the Theater of All Possibilities ever put on. It was everything simultaneously. It was science. It was a profoundly human experiment. It was so optimistic.
The optimistic premise was that we humans could become Biospherians. You know, Sam, every one of your listeners can take stock of yourself and: What are you? You may be whatever the gender, your business is, your age in life.
But at a very core level — and I think everyone sort of suspects this — you are a Biospherian, and you are part of Earth's biosphere. Metabolically, psychologically, emotionally, physiologically. You're part of the matrix of life, just like the microbes that are in you and working with you and the microbes outside and the plants and the animals.
So Biosphere 2 was kind of a consciousness-changing event.
DINGMAN: I love the connection that you made between the what if in theater and the what if of a project like Biosphere 2. Can you think of any moments where your theatrical background helped you navigate the experience?
NELSON: If you learn to do theater, very quickly the coin drops that, in a way, all your life is different dramas. You're in comedies; you're in social dramas. The family gathering at Christmas with maybe some political craziness or religious friction. You know, it's all theater.
I was in charge of the sewage system of Biosphere 2. You have to fall in love with everything — how do you fall in love with wastewater? You have to love the process.
Biosphere 2 was built for us to find out what we don't know. So when people were saying, "Well, that was a great failure, that oxygen began mysteriously disappearing from your atmosphere."
No, it's like that's why we built Biosphere 2 is to find out. This is the challenge of our lives, is how do we keep and make healthier the biospheric system that we all depend on?
DINGMAN: Well, I have been speaking with Mark Nelson. We have been talking about his wonderful book, "Irrationals in Hope of the Impossible: The Origins of Biosphere 2 at Synergia Ranch in the Seventies." And he was, of course, one of the original crew members of Biosphere 2. Mark, thank you for this conversation.
NELSON: Oh, it's been fun. Thanks, Sam.
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