In a career-spanning installment of the journal BioScience's In Their Own Words oral history series, Missouri Botanical Garden President Emeritus Peter Raven illuminates numerous topics, sharing insights related to the sustainability of human civilization, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance of science in addressing the world's greatest challenges. Raven, a recent coauthor of "A Call to Action: Marshaling Science for Society," highlights the importance of public outreach in overcoming deeply rooted societal problems. Among them, he argues that our present economic system "sees natural productivity like every other commodity," as something that grows in proportion with demand. "Guess what," says Raven, "it doesn't. It's got a real limit. The limit is known as the planet Earth."