Reskillience

🪶 MONDAYS FROM NOVEMBER 4  We’ve got a jazzy new format and just a couple of months till 2025, so let’s set some new years resolutions...Reskillience style! Over the next ten weeks, ten guests will share lists of ten things that are close to their hearts... ...things to try, or consider, or start... …that will spark all kinds of inspiration. Come and hang out with permie legends, renegade un...

Don’t you love it when science geeks get spiritual? I do, because when highly rational folks admit that the world is far more mysterious than it is predictable, it’s intensely validating for us intuitive hippies who’ve believed in magic all along. This is one of those beautiful and surprising conversations with one of my farming idols Charlie Showers from Black Barn Farm that’ll have you rethinkin...

*Recorded outdoors under a passionfruit vine with wind in the banana leaves* This is one of those conversations that’ll shake you up, rattle your cage and light a fire under your butt to make change – because today’s guest reckons we need to upskill, now! It might just be the greatest pep talk in Reskillience history, from one of the most passionate permies in the movement. It’s Brett Cooper from...

🌼 A spring equinox special 🌼 Meet Amelie Vanderstock – science communicator, artist, musician, native bee pHD and total ray of sunshine. Amelie has a passion for pollinator-friendly cities, and raises awareness through workshops, collaborative art and obscenely catchy songs that celebrate weeds, bees and bin chickens. This ain’t just an interview about invertebrates – though, there’s plenty of i...

The first time I saw Anisa Rogers (who was basking on the grass reading a book) I thought: this person looks hekkin relaxed, has a tan consistent with living in reality, and the brightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. We got talking and I learned that Anisa is involved in all kinds of system-disrupting mischief in Naarm, Melbourne, as part of the Degrowth Network – and so many social justice, environm...

My guest today is Joel Meadows, a phenomenal human who happens to be a permaculture teacher, rocket oven engineer, energy geek, green tech sceptic, sculptor, illustrator, musician and composting ninja. This is one epic episode that encompasses: 🌟Are renewables really all that? 🌟Why we’re using more fossil fuels than ever *cry*. 🌟Smart phone free life. 🌟Being deliberately abnormal. 🌟ROCKET OVE...

An interview with the intrepid author of my favourite book in recent years, Robyn Mundy! (Word nerds, snow bunnies, penguin enthusiasts and fans of the freezing cold, this one’s for you.) Robyn is a Tasmanian author and adventurer, Arctic guide, Antarctic research assistant, and lifelong lover of snow and ice. I picked up her book Cold Coast in the library on a whim, because it had a cute Arctic f...

Sit down and whip out your preferred pen* because Dylan Graves is doing back-of-the-envelope calculations to show you how to access land within three to five years. I know, sounds weirdly left-brained for our whimsical podcast, but fear not, this conversation with an inspiring and intensely honest permaculture teacher will have you dreaming and doing in tandem. In the deep south of Aotearoa New Ze...

What's the story with free birthing, wild birthing, orgasmic births and births that don't go to plan? Here to deliver answers to all our laborious questions is the wise and erudite Eleanor Young, researcher, permaculturalist, writer and midwife. Even if you're not some born-again birthing evangelist, you'll find lots to love in this gentle and soulful exploration of human propagation. Because ther...

Would you pick up a schoolkid’s half eaten apple and eat it? Annie Raser-Rowland would, while shining a lopsided smile to passersby. Annie is the radical wordsmith behind the bestselling The Art Of Frugal Hedonism and The Weed Forager’s Handbook, co-authored with the equally-and-proudly-as-stingy Adam Grubb. This is one helluva conversation that covers: 🌟Why to be even weirder 🌟Rubbing frugality...

Many of you have requested interviews with folks who are making beautiful nests in less-than-perfect contexts, like the city. Who haven’t flown off to Planet Permaculture but are sticking with modern civilisation. You’ve asked to explore the personal terrain of chronic pain, limited energy and neurodivergence; highlighting radical self compassion as the necessary first step in the radical reimagin...

Did you know that women represent less than one third of artists in the music industry? And just 12.6% of songwriters? I’m quoting my guests here, Lauren and Oberon Carter of Spiral Garden and, lately, Suffragette Records in Hobart, Lutruwita. Suffragette Records stocks music made by women only, not for the sake of exclusion but to rebalance the scales. Because who and what we listen to patterns o...

Scarcity mindsets + scrofulous zombies are no match for nature’s weedy abundance! So says Diego Bonetto , wild food advocate and forager with a heart of greenish-gold.  Diego calls Wiradjuri Country, NSW, home and leads foraging workshops, seasonal edible adventures, community art projects, wild storytelling events, makes more weedy media appearances than I can list here and is the author of...

Couldn't find your way out of a cardigan? Get into natural navigation with Tristan Gooley, award winning and bestselling author, expedition leader, and nicknamed “The Sherlock Holmes of Nature” by the BBC. What I love about Tristan is that he is first and foremost a practitioner of fun, about how great it feels to notice nature’s signs and clues, about the fizzy thrill of uncorking our ancestral p...

Elisa Rathje lives on a small farm, on a small island, telling microscopic stories of resilience.  She's an artist, writer, filmmaker, podcaster, unschooler, grower, permaculturalist,  goatherd and goose mistress whose work has fed me, and so many others, for years. From Appleturnover Farm on Salt Spring Island (in the Strait of Georgia between mainland British Columbia, Vancouver Island...

Jade Miles is a very special mate of mine. I turned up on her doorstep as a WWOOFer in 2018 and we got on like asparagus and eggs, which is what we had for dinner that night if I recall correctly.  You probs know Jade as the host of the Futuresteading podcast, keeper of Black Barn Farm and writer of the most personal and compelling instagram captions in all the land.  I love that Jade is...

I just polished off my last jar of blackberry jam and it’s only April, which is why I need today’s guest to assist me in the finer arts of sustainable homesteading.  It’s Mara Ripani of Village Dreaming and Orto cooking school, a force of and for nature with a passion for greening cities, growing food, permaculture, preserving food, baking bread and sowing seeds.  Mara is about as earthe...

Are you keen to join the dots between parenting and activism? Want to grow a beautiful parallel paradigm in and through and with the yoof?  I’m not a parent, but I am someone who believes that our “impact” starts at home; that the work of our times begins with ourselves and the beings in our orbit.  So I reached out to one of the greatest women I know who also happens to be a parenthood...

Leaves and loam, feather and bone, it’s Patrick Jones from Artist as Family!  Patrick is Meg Magpie Ulman’s partner in permaculture neopeasantry, father of Blackwood and Zephyr, creature of Tree Elbow, songsmith, wordsmith, goatherd, grower, speaker, radical homemaker and reverential rubbish collector, most often seen on two wheels towing a load of scrap wood as one might bear a royal being,...

It's all very well to forage weeds and track wombats, weave baskets from willow and walk barefoot cross country... but how do you stay wild in the city? With kids? With a face-sucking phone in your pocket? Claire Dunn is a good person to ask about these things, being a key figure in Australia's rewilding movement and uncommonly balanced advocate for undomestication.  If you don’t know Claire,...

Dr. Yin Paradies is a loving tearer downerer of teetering assumptions, a recalibrator of compasses, an Aboriginal-Asian-Anglo Australian conducting deep research on racism, anti-racism, Indigenous knowledges and decolonisation.  Despite inhabiting a comfortable burrow in academia as the Chair of Race Relations at Deakin University, he’s also an anarchist, an animist, a trickster, a disruptor...

Have you considered the backstory of your leather shoes? Are you curious about the process that transforms raw hides into luxurious handbags? Do you wonder how tanning relates to personal and collective resilience? Ever thought about nature connection through the lens of Attachment Theory? If so, my guest today is sure to massage your mind.  It’s Josh McLean, a social worker and Bush Adventur...

David Holmgren is the co-originator of Permaculture, self-aware contrarian and contemplator of everything.  I’m lucky enough to be part of his extended household, so rather than shooting the breeze about the state of the world while sowing parsnips I figured I better bloody well get him on the podcast.  We dig into David’s own internal landscape as well as the contours of his life at Mel...

Today's yakkity yak is with one of the most radical women in permaculture -- and you know how wild those permies can be. It's Su Dennett! Life partner of David Holmgren and unspoken ruler of the roost at Melliodora. Su is a seventy seven year old inspiration, a permaculture matriarch and precious repository of ye old skillz. I sat down with her in the teahouse, a few moons ago now, and record this...

I’m not a doctor – though I wish I was because who wouldn’t want to take their petrified child to see Dr Payne? However, I did study herbal medicine and practice as a naturopath, which could be why so many folks still get in touch with me about plant medicine.  So! To all those green appreciators out there – wannabe witches, budding shamans, dandelion disciples, mullein maestros, burdock rock...