The RegenNarration

Paul Hawken won’t need an introduction for many of you. But for those unfamiliar, Paul is a multiple best-selling author, entrepreneur, and advisor to heads of state and CEOs on climatic, economic and ecological regeneration. Paul and I last spoke for the podcast a bit over a year ago, on release of his latest best-selling book, Regeneration: Ending the climate crisis in one generation. That’s now...

Professor Karen O’Brien is a globally renowned thought leader on climate change impacts and social transformation. She has been heavily involved in the work of the IPCC, and shared in its 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. She’s also been on the scientific advisory board for Project Drawdown, and is the co-founder of cCHANGE, an Oslo-based company that has become a beacon in the space of social transformatio...

This week’s episode is something extraordinary. Last week featured a conversation with Di and Ian Haggerty, in a shearing shed filled by 170 people from right around the country. You might remember it ended with Di’s passing reference to some amazing insight that Noongar woman Heidi Mippy had shared. Heidi is an author, senior staffer with the Noongar Land Enterprise Group, and so much more. She h...

Longer term listeners to this podcast will feel increasingly familiar with Ian and Di Haggerty, creators of what Charles Massy has called their world breakthrough regenerative farming operation. But you won’t quite have heard them like this. Just last Monday, a capacity audience of 170 people from every state in Australia (and even a few continents) flocked to the shearing shed on one of the Hagge...

Well known ABC radio presenter Natasha Mitchell called this an “unbelievably powerful session ‘On Fire!’” Ballardong Noongar leader and regenerative landholder, Oral McGuire, was alongside Greg Mullins, the former NSW Fire Commissioner who became a major national figure in the Black Summer bushfires, and Professor Lesley Head, co-author of the latest book in the incredible First Knowledges series...

Bruce Pascoe in an Aboriginal Australian man, award-winning writer, and farmer. Last month I was fortunate to host Bruce in conversation at the brilliant Quantum Words Festival here in Perth. This was Schools Day, so there were about 150 people, mostly students, in the theatre. The session’s touchstone was Bruce’s extraordinary book Young Dark Emu. In keeping with its themes, we travelled deep and...

Here’s a little over 20 additional minutes of ‘offcuts’ from my conversation with Douglas Rushkoff. It features a few of our more personal exchanges. The first seven or eight minutes delves further into the dangerous appeal Douglas is seeing in the thinking of some prominent people. Which leads to exploring some recent experiences of the over-culture in our respective countries, with community-bas...

Douglas Rushkoff is the Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics who MIT named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals.” He also hosts the podcast I listen to most, called Team Human. And he’s the best-selling author of 20 books, including the new one, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. The publisher’s blurb reads: ‘We always knew but now we *...

Matthew Evans is a chef, farmer, host of the popular TV series Gourmet Farmer, and most recently the author of ‘Soil: The incredible story of what keeps the earth, and us, healthy.’ And what an incredible story. Prepare for perhaps the most mind-blowing hour on this podcast (and that feels like it’s saying something). Matthew’s framed it as a story of bombs, of civilisations falling, of gods and p...

Robert Pekin is the CEO & co-founder of Food Connect, the self-described ‘systems enterprise’ in Brisbane. You might remember Rob from episode 28 with his brilliant partner Emma-Kate Rose, when we talked at length about their back-story and their soon to be successful $2m equity crowd fund. And from episode 88 last year, with Kungalu and Birri-Gubba Woman Gaala Watson, on an imminent native gr...

Dr Terry McCosker OAM is the legendary co-founder of RCS Australia. Charles Massy credits RCS as being behind the greatest regenerative agriculture movement in Australia. And throughout its pioneering decades, Pam McCosker has been the unheralded lynch pin. Terry makes no secret of it. Nor did Charles when he wrote in his best-selling Call of the Reed Warbler: “When I look back over the rise of re...

Ross O’Reilly is a former champion regional rugby league coach, real estate agent and restauranteur, all on the way to founding his ultimate vision in 2016 – High Valley Dawn. It carries the label ‘permaculture farm’, but somehow feels like so much more. Think incredible market garden and food forest, deeply restorative work place and learning centre, grazing animals and thriving community, with a...

Dr Amanda Cahill is the CEO of The Next Economy. I feel like I’ve already introduced Amanda to you, given how often she’s come up in conversations here. And you might even recognise her from Damon Gameau’s film 2040, or more recently on the ABC’s Q&A program. Amanda’s work at The Next Economy supports communities, government, industry and others to develop a more resilient, just and regenerati...

Jodie Jackson is an author, yoga practitioner and media campaigner. Her first book is titled ‘You Are What You Read: why changing your media diet can change the world’. “Information is to the mind, what food is to the body”, she says. And after becoming a mother, and seeing the news affect even her small children, she wrote the children’s book ‘Little Ruffle and The World Beyond’. All this stemmed...

This special extra with Kristy Stewart features 20 additional minutes or so from our conversation. We went on here to talk about innovative enterprise development and next generation opportunities, and working with government and communities to help open these up. On the one hand, we talked changes to zoning and other regulations that inhibit young people and others joining in with value-add enter...

Kristy Stewart is a regenerative farmer, free-diver, and next generation community leader. Kristy is already impressing audiences, students and other farmers around the country. And in a sense, it’s no surprise, given her pioneering family stock. Her father is Andrew Stewart, award-winning co-founder with Rowan Reid, in 1993, of the world-renowned Otway Agroforestry Network, in the south-east of A...

Kate Fenech is an impressive 15 year old student who’s found herself part of the extraordinary SS4C movement (the School Strikes for Climate), with growing passions for marine science and regenerative farming. I met her when we were both late conscripts to a premiere screening of Regenerating Australia in Busselton, WA, that ended up becoming a unique post-film dialogue. The film’s director, Damon...

Dr Valerie Brown is a Visiting Professor at the renowned Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University, and an international figure in the field of collective thinking, with a list of awards and accolades as long as your leg. But what brought me to her door was hearing doyen of regenerative agriculture, Charlie Massy, defer to her over the years. Charles was among...

Today’s episode features the legendary author, advisor and media producer, Hazel Henderson. Hazel has had such a big impact on so many, including yours truly. In my case, it has stemmed from over two decades following her work, and two hours of unhurried conversation for this podcast back in 2019. At the end of that conversation, Hazel invited me to visit if ever I was in Florida. And though I hav...

Jade Miles is an author, podcaster, farmer, organiser, speaker, and a few other things besides. I first came across Jade’s podcast, Futuresteading, back when it started. Then last year, the visual extravaganza of Futuresteading the book came along - sub-titled ‘live like tomorrow matters: practical skills, recipes and rituals for a simpler life’. It draws on Jade’s family life at Black Barn Farm –...

 You might remember Ian Congdon and Courtney Young from one of the great stories we heard about last year, on how this young family is changing the face of farming - and milling - in Australia. That’s through their incredibly delicious enterprise Woodstock Flour, and Courtney’s spectacular art. As it happens, our conversation last year took place on the day they finished building the first Austral...

This is a profound personal and collective story right at the heart of systemic and cultural change. Serenity Hill and Kirsten Larsen are regenerative farmers and co-founders of the Open Food Network. You might remember my conversation with Kirsten online two years ago, as Covid took hold, and Open Food Network took off. At that stage, they’d experienced a tenfold increase in both people signing u...

Paul Cleary is a best-selling author and journalist who’s just written an incredible book – certainly a must read for any Aussie, and every West Aussie, with implications that arguably extend far beyond. It’s called ‘Title Fight: How the Yindjibarndi battled and defeated a mining giant’. The back cover bills it as ‘a David and Goliath story set in the ancient landscape of the Pilbara’. That’s in t...

Jane Slattery is the co-founder, with Diane and Ian Haggerty, of natural intelligence farming – underpinning what Charles Massy has called their ‘world breakthrough’ operation. And to hear Di an Ian defer to Jane in many ways, had me so looking forward to meeting her. Then, earlier this year, I happened to be near Jane’s neck of the woods in South Australia, hosting one of the Planet Talks at WOMA...

This extra to episode 123, with the legendary Fred Provenza, delves into more of the metaphysical context of everything we spoke about in the main episode. We traverse the spectra of collapse and regeneration, and how we can live well in all that, here and now. There are some profound stories of personal transformation here – and an ultimate convergence of mythology and mysticism with his life’s w...