The RegenNarration

A brief bonus featuring part of my conversation with Chantal Caruso that never saw the light of day, due to Clean State’s mandate for shorter episodes. A poignant moment occurred at the launch of The Clean State Plan, with a group of First Nations people there expressing concern at the impending renewables revolution. It raised an important question - how do we transition energy systems without re...

As introduced last week, today launches a special festive season series of the Clean State Stories. This was a series of nine episodes I produced a few years ago for the Clean State podcast, dedicated to regenerative transitions in my home state of Western Australia. Sadly, the podcast and its host non-profit are no more. But the series of episodes featured such brilliant guests and stories, that...

A brief new year's greeting from Guatemala, to herald a special festive season series of short episodes.  Around four years ago, some of you might remember I produced a series of nine episodes for an organisation called Clean State WA. That became the Clean State podcast, dedicated to regenerative transitions in my home state of Western Australia. Sadly, that organisation is no more, but the...

Welcome to the customary package of highlights from another brilliant array of guests throughout 2024, accompanied by some of the music and sounds of Country heard along the way – this time across two continents, 49 episodes and 78 guests, from all walks of life. Listening to it all together in one place last night was just incredible. I hope you enjoy it too. You’ll hear a little from me first, w...

A few weeks ago I released a podcast marking the premiere of an episode of Australian Story that featured the incredible story of regeneration at the hands of the Henggeler family at Kachana Station . Many of you already know the story, from its popularity on this podcast . Well, that Australian Story has gone onto well over half a million views already. And no sooner had it gone out than I got th...

On the morning of Wednesday the 27th of November, I got the news that the legendary Carol Sanford had died . You might remember the conversation I was privileged to share with her at the start of last year, for our 150th episode . Carol knew she was dying, so much was getting difficult or impossible for her, and even speaking was tough, as Motor-Neuron Disease (as we call it in Australia) was taki...

This week we’re back with Chloe Maxmin , for a debrief that has been eagerly awaited – by me and many of you, I know – on how the Dirtroad candidates went at the recent US elections, and where to from here. For those who didn’t catch Chloe in episode 225 last month , from up at the farm in Maine, Chloe became the first Democrat ever to represent Maine House District 88, and the youngest member of...

The Regenerate conference in Denver a couple of weeks ago was like no conference I’d experienced in the ‘regen ag’ / food systems space. Such a presence of next generations, women and varied cultures amongst the 500 attendees. And multiple moments of crazy serendipity. It also started the day after the US federal election. So the air was heavy with emotion and uncertainty, when Sarah Wentzel-Fishe...

One of the most remarkable stories of regeneration on this podcast – still the second most listened to episode - featured in a landmark ABC TV special back home last week. One of Australia’s best journalists, Walkley-award winner Ben Cheshire, pulled together the story of Kachana Station, in the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia, for one of Australia’s most loved, influential and long...

When we were in New York recently, I dropped by to visit Douglas Rushkoff at his Queens College office. For those who don’t recall Douglas from his previous times on this podcast , he’s a media professor, documentary-maker, host of the Team Human podcast, and best-selling author of 20 books - including the updated edition of Program or Be Programmed, out now, with particular additions around AI. T...

This is a bonus extra to episode 228, featuring the Q&A that took place after the film screening of Rural Runners in the Shepherdstown Opera House , West Virginia. That award-winning film is the story of Chloe Maxmin’s incredible community-based electoral wins in Maine from episode 225 . By Chloe’s side every step of the way was her best mate, and then campaign manager, Canyon Woodward , with...

“I've had several folks share with me that they are voting for Trump. But they're also voting for me.” That’s what Lucia Valentine told me when I spoke with her and another first-time candidate for the State of West Virginia at the coming elections, Maria Russo . This seemed to say so much about the coming elections here. For a start, that they’re far from as simplistic, binary and polar...

‘The biggest strides in hemp-crete construction are going down on one of the smallest reservations in America.’ That’s how the bill reads on Patagonia Film’s latest production, The Green Buffalo, launching online globally today . It’s referring to the Lower Sioux Indian Community, on the southern bank of the Minnesota River about 100 miles SW of Minneapolis. Turns out we had driven close by after...

In some ways, the first 150 seconds of this excerpt from episode 226 with Bill Pluecker (alongside partner Chloe Maxmin), say everything that needs to be said about where politics is being done better in the US. They sum with the passage that became the lead-off quote in that episode. And they lead off this powerful last ten minutes or so of my conversation with Bill. Bill, an independent represen...

 The last 20 minutes or so of my conversation in episode 225 with Maine’s youngest ever female senator, Chloe Maxmin, has stayed with me since its release. And I’ve heard from a few of you saying similar. So in the interest of not letting it be too ephemeral with the passing podcast feed, this excerpt from that episode features that 20 minutes. We unpack the inspiring and transformative journey be...

After recording with Bill and Chloe at Begin Again Farm for last week’s episode , Bill happened to drop word of an upcoming festival. And not just any festival, but the 48th annual running of the Common Ground Country Fair . It happened on 20-22 September this year, in the aptly named Unity, Maine, about 40 miles north of Bill and Chloe’s place. The Fair draws 60,000 people, features all kinds of...

There’s a ‘so-called’ battle for rural America at the heart of the coming federal election. But what if it needn’t be a battle? And in fact, what if heart is what’s really at stake? People who love their places – places, by the way, that constitute 20% of the vote, and 97% of the land in this country. After the recent Vice-Presidential debate here in the US, featuring two men speaking to their roo...

This is one of my favourite conversations, and it starts a mini-series of sorts. I’ve had many listeners ask how things feel in this US election year. So, after months speaking with all kinds of people as we travelled through half the states of this country, throughout October, as the election approaches, I’ll offer what we’ve observed, in conversation with people doing some of the more outstandin...

This mid-week mail run comes to you from Savannah Georgia, as a hurricane nears the Florida coast and the storms begin here in advance of it. As usual with these brief episodes, I reply to text messages from listeners through the new link in our show notes. And this time I also announce the recent winners of the book giveaway. That’s before sharing some concerning news for independent podcast crea...

A new holistic farming festival is about to launch back home in Australia. Inspired by the famed Groundswell in the UK, GROUNDED! lands in beautiful southern Tasmania on the 4th and 5th of December - with a pre-festival event on the 3rd of December too. It’s billed as a cross between a world class conference, an informative field day and a cracking food festival. This is big news, and a huge under...

After recording the main episode with Kelsey, we headed out for a very special tour through regenerating cultural and natural grasslands. We pick it up amongst the layered stories around the nearby Missouri River / Lake Oahe. That sets up a sense of the power in arriving at the family’s re-introduced Sundance grounds. Soon after, we witness Kelsey finding Indian grass back on the ranch for the fir...

Kelsey Scott is a 4th generation cow producer and 125th generation land steward at DX Ranch , on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. Kelsey is a Lakota woman, citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, Chief Strategy Officer for the Intertribal Agriculture Council , owner of a direct-to-consumer regenerative beef operation DX Beef , part of the education programs her family runs,...

The extraordinary Churchtown Dairy in New York is restoring dairy farming in a context where such farms are still closing around them. They are doing it with nature, family, food and festival at its heart. With organic and biodynamic methods, they are keeping cattle together in their families to amazing benefit, cultivating myriad farm products including medicinal plants, restoring a diverse lands...

The evening before we recorded the main episode with Pedro, we went out on the Plains to shepherd the buffalo to their next patch. This is a rare chance to hear one of the world’s most respected bison wranglers – and the animals themselves – at work. And there were some very special moments too, in this condensed 20-minute special extra to episode 220. The wind can be mighty on the Plains, and as...

Pedro Calderon-Dominguez is regarded as an extraordinary horseman. Though as fate would have it, his life took a series of unexpected turns, through wildlife ecology as the first to further Aldo’s Leopold’s work with black bears, into holistic management with some of the legends in Mexico and beyond, and ultimately into working with buffalo. Now he’s regarded by some as the world’s top bison wrang...