The RegenNarration

Marking Jeff's run for Parliament at the West Australian state election today, this is a special extra to episode 78 with Jeff Pow and Michelle McManus. It’s a stretch of eight minutes or so that starts with Jeff describing the extraordinary and instructive experience of the day Southampton burned. And it closes with a collective reflection on notions of responsibility, stewardship and the lo...

Jeff Pow and Michelle McManus are bringing chicken farming back to earth, and playing a part in rebirthing opportunities for communities and regions everywhere. They’ll say they’re doing nothing particularly new, but they’re finding a way to regenerate country, community and economy in an unprecedented context of crises. For them, most recently, an horrific bushfire devastated their historic South...

This is an excerpt from episode 77 featuring the last 15 minutes or so of my conversation with the award-winning director of ‘That Sugar Film’ and ‘2040’, Damon Gameau. We pick up on what Damon says has been the most rewarding, promising and important part of his work with both films – working with kids and teachers in education. One million young people have engaged with the 2040 film and initiat...

Welcome to a new year of The RegenNarration. And what a year it’s shaping up to be. But before we get into that, I wanted to take a brief moment here to admit to feeling a little flat. And by extension, to explain the delayed start to the podcast this year. Some sad and in some ways seismic changes have consumed me in recent times. And really, these changes relate to everything this podcast is abo...

We’re signing off for the year with our annual episode of highlights from our brilliant array of guests throughout 2020. If you’ve been listening throughout this unique and likely transformative year, enjoy the revisit. And for those newer to the podcast, here’s a snapshot of how the year played out on The RegenNarration. Track list: Welcome to 2020 (from ep. 53), to music by Jeremiah Johnson Dr S...

This is an extract from episode 75 featuring the last half an hour of my conversation with regenerative agriculture and holistic management pioneer, Allan Savory. We pick up where Allan states the need for this to go mainstream now. He goes on to propose how it might happen, while laying down the challenge. And outlines why he believes the change is very close. We go on to talk about the largely ‘...

This is a special extra to episode 75 with Allan Savory. We delve further here into a few areas that have been pivotal to Allan’s pioneering life. It starts with a little exchange on how wilderness and livestock-based agriculture can regenerate country together (and where they can’t). Then we turn to the wilderness within, going back to the incredibly formative time Allan experienced as a tracker....

Haul back through the spread of regenerative agriculture in recent decades, and Allan Savory is there. His global influence is hard to overstate. Here we chat about his extraordinary life, and the evolution of his insights that have proved so transformative for so many. Thinking holistically is one thing. But how do we actually manage our lives and societies holistically? And ultimately, how do we...

This is an extract from episode 74 featuring the end of my conversation with the founding director and current Chair of Perth City Farm, Rosanne Scott. We’d just been talking about some of the powerful stories of Aboriginal heritage where City Farm is located. That lead to the exchange we start with here, about arts and culture being central to organising societies in holistic, fulfilling and effe...

Last year was the 25th birthday of a cultural icon and regenerative hub, nestled into the inner eastern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. City Farm is an extraordinary place – an urban farm with a big vision. This half hectare block was a degraded industrial wasteland. But an inspired community transformed it into a place for organic food, farming, community connection, arts, enterprise and edu...

This is an extract from episode 73 featuring the end of my conversation with Amy Steel, former Australian netballer, global EcoAthletes and Sports Environment Alliance Ambassador, and Senior Manager | Sustainability and Climate Change at Deloitte; and Lily Brazel, now former Australian hockey player, global EcoAthletes Ambassador, and founder of Stature Clothing (including its podcast The State of...

Amy Steel and Lily Brazel are outstanding international athletes. Well, Amy was. Until a heat stroke after a pre-season game prematurely ended her career. Still suffering the effects today, she’s set upon a path of working with big business to help achieve perhaps humanity's greatest milestone - meeting the Paris Climate Agreements. Amy’s quickly established herself as Senior Manager, Sustain...

This is an extract from episode 72 featuring the end of my conversation with author, systems thinker and regenerative soils educator, Nicole Masters. We talk about what she’s seen of human transformation, particularly where people have been navigating change pro-actively, as opposed to responding to trauma. We go on to chat about where the regenerative movement is at, her changing focus, and the p...

This extra to episode 72 features an additional few minutes with author, systems thinker and regenerative soils educator, Nicole Masters. It stems from the enthralling part of our conversation in the main episode about soil, the microbiome, gut health and our immune systems (from around the 40-minute mark). This triggered a question that I’d thought about a while back, after speaking with Dr Zach...

The world is desertifying at a truly alarming rate. It’s estimated that thirty footy fields of soil are lost per minute around the world. And after thousands of years of human agriculture, there may only be 60 harvests left in those soils. But if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ll know there’s another option here – a regenerative transformation is emerging with at times stag...

This is an extract of our live panel conversation from the end of episode 71, ‘The Law of the Land: Creating a regenerative system of law’. Each speaker has just presented for 10 minutes, so we pick up here at the beginning of our all-in conversation with Professor Kate Auty, Dr Alessandro Pelizzon, Nicola Rivers and Michael Leunig. It starts with Kate relating the success of the Koori Courts to o...

This extra to episode 71 features the rest of our live conversation with Professor Kate Auty, Dr Alessandro Pelizzon and Nicola Rivers. We pick up the last 5 minutes of our conversation on stage, before 20 minutes or so of outstanding audience Q&A. The conversation delves further here into the global movement for the rights of nature, including where it’s being done well, the “intensely practi...

Decades of legal protection for the living world haven’t stopped it being progressively destroyed. So what do we need to do, and what’s currently being done, to regenerate the law of the land and better protect and restore the living world? Thinking about all this again in recent weeks prompted me to go back to a recording of a live panel event I produced on the topic at Melbourne’s Federation Squ...

On Monday 28 September, one of this country’s most awarded and long-standing documentary series, Australian Story, featured regenerative farmer and best-selling author, Charles Massy AO. Charles’ best-selling book, ‘Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth’ has been described by Paul Hawken as “a definitive masterpiece that takes its place along with the writings of Aldo Leopold, W...

There are so many notable parts of this episode with Tyson Yunkaporta that, true to the title of this extract, invite you to come sit with us for the hour and a bit of the main episode (and the extra if you'd like more). But having said that, this is another little extract I did want to highlight. It’s our foundational exchange early in the piece on long-form podcasting being the new camp fir...

This is an extract of my conversation with Tyson Yunkaporta from the end of episode 70, ‘Sand Talk: Indigenous thinking, saving the world & living creation’. It starts with me suggesting to Tyson, in the wake of our conversation to this point, that a particular tale in his book might offer us a touchstone for our yarn. It turns out he’d never been asked about this part of his book before, but...

This extra to episode 70 features the rest of my conversation with Tyson Yunkaporta, author of the award-winning book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. This is the part of our conversation that picked up after Tyson’s toilet stop. We delve further here into the universality of loss in being separated from land, the fascinating convergence of thinking around the centrality of t...

Tyson Yunkaporta is the author of award-winning book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, and a Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He’s also a poet and artist carving traditional tools and weapons, processes that were central to writing the book. Tyson belongs to the Apalech Clan from Western Cape York in far north Queensland, with commun...

This is an extract from what has quickly become one of the most played episodes on this podcast - and the second most played episode in the last year (behind only my conversation with Zach Bush MD, the keynote international guest to RCS Australia’s Conference scheduled next year). It features the last 20 minutes of my conversation with Terry McCosker for episode 67, Behind the Greatest Regenerativ...

This is an extract from my conversation with Dianne and Ian Haggerty for episode 68, Natural Intelligence Farming: The ‘world breakthrough’ regenerating land, health and community. You'll hear the last 20 minutes of the main episode, back at the homestead, after we’d been getting around a couple of the farms over the preceding days. We talk about how the Haggerty's are creating and suppo...