The RegenNarration

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...

Mark Taylor is the miller and baker at the Miller + Baker store, recently opened in North Perth. It is a spectacular American Stone Mill (the first of its kind in Western Australia), and an amazing bakery, but that’s not the half of it. You might remember in my conversation with pioneering regenerative farmers Dianne and Ian Haggerty, for episode 68, that they mentioned some of their ‘natural inte...

This additional extra to episode 68 features a series of conversations at the homestead that were reluctantly cut from the main episode, along with some off-the-record exchanges around the fire one evening. Together, they chart an important and moving part of the story. From how business is being done with the natural intelligence system, and the opportunities being sought for all – and not just w...

In this extra to episode 68, we delve into the fascinating back story of Di and Ian’s ‘world breakthrough’ operation. We talk about how they came to their key insights and breakthroughs, Di’s formative experience in the health industry, what owning a remote roadhouse taught them, some of the extraordinary people, places and communities who’ve influenced them on the journey, and yes, how they were...

Dianne and Ian Haggerty form a highly respected, pioneering regenerative farming duo. I’ve come to visit them in the central wheat belt of Western Australia, to learn more about what Charles Massy has called their ‘world breakthrough’ operation. They call it ‘natural intelligence’ farming. Guided by the microbiome, and a whole host of other living systems, the Haggerty’s are regenerating degraded...

In this special extra to episode 67, we talk about some of the key changes that Terry’s observed over the decades, and how to keep them coming. We also elaborate on the vision he articulated in the main episode, including some major shifts in supply chains and some of the positive politics currently unfolding around carbon and biodiversity credits. And we delve more deeply into his stock in trade...

Terry McCosker is a formidable store of experience and wisdom, born of a love of the land and an acute sense of humanity, and forged through suffering unimaginable tragedy. And that’s alongside the trials and tribulations that come from simply being at the vanguard of significant change. Terry is a farmer, self-described transient part-owner of the National Estate, and co-founder of RCS Australia....

David Pollock is one of Australia’s most prominent regenerative pastoralists. You may have seen David and his wife Frances on ABC TV’s Australian Story. You may also have heard my previous conversations with them on this podcast. The most recent of those was when David’s brilliant book was released, almost a year ago. It’s called ‘The Wooleen Way: Renewing an Australian Resource’, and it’s been de...

This is an extract from our conversation on Jansz Beach overlooking Ningaloo Reef, for episode 65. It features the first 15 minutes of our chat on the Resilient Reefs Initiative – the vision, the successful model it’s based on, and what’s happened so far. That includes some brilliant recent developments bringing people together, including some breaking news regarding the Traditional Custodians and...

We're back at the magnificent Ningaloo Reef for a couple of firsts - the first conversation in person for the year, and a world first collaboration aiming for the survival of the world’s coral reefs, and the communities that depend on them. Dr Peter Barnes is the Marine Park Coordinator at Ningaloo Reef – one of five World Heritage listed coral reefs. Australia is blessed with the responsibil...

This is an extract from the end of my conversation with Tony Rinaudo, the award-winning Senior Climate Action Advisor for World Vision, aka The Forest Maker. We talk about his global vision, how societies can come to read the land again, and how the extraordinary summer bushfires triggered a major new global collaboration recently launched in Australia. But it was the story Tony told of a truth an...