If you're yet to hear Mitch perform 'You're the voice", I beg you to head to the link at the bottom and listen.
 Carrying the message of unification, love and kindness. Culture is not foreign to Mitch who imbeds a celebration of it into every facet of life as tools to build identity and a strong sense of place. For him living and breathing culture is the start middle and end of it.
An articulate, straight talker he sheds light on why everyone deserves a chance to not only survive but to thrive.  His super-power-story-telling ability notches up a few ranks when on stage and over the last few years he has found a platform for passing on knowledge through song and dance. 

Nerves and awe aside, Jade manages to dig a little into the psyche of this incredible individual, who without question shows us why the first nations people of this country were not hunters and gatherers but the most purposeful people to have ever walked.

Show Notes

• Ma-wollagoolabah - self, family, community
• Falling in love with his identity and eagerly celebrating this in a respectful and authentic way
• The value of being raised by a strong single mother
• Publicly honoring women to the point of reverence
• Being relentless in our desire to keep talking to convey a message of transparency
• Circle people - we are connected to everything and everything is connected to us
• Can song and dance as mediums take their place as a much needed storytelling tools
• Emojis are an ancient format 
• Humans disconnection from spirit, soul and heart
• Being the most connected and the most disconnected simultaneously
• Holidays = connection to the natural world. Do we love holidays or do we love the opportunity to unconsciously  connect to our evolutionary place
• Building an understanding of the spirit in the land
• Opening yourself up to ‘feel’ 
• Honoring our ancestors, offering a rightful seat at the decision table and acknowledging the knowledge held by indigenous people
• "We're not hunters and gatherers, we’re the most purposeful people to have ever walked
• There are so many conversations to be had - we need to keep talking
• His mob cared for the land to co-exist not to be captured or controlled 
• Walking together and healing so we can get to where we need to get to
• The first people of a land MUST be heard first 
• If your hearts in the right place you can only do the best you can with what you've got to ‘level’ up’
• Stradling the reality of living an urban life with intent and purpose while knowing how powerful a childhood on country can be
• Self perception vs how others perceive you
• Instilling identity, belonging and connection through ritual
• Living and breathing culture as part of every day life
• Avoiding the traps of fame by staying focussed on his purpose
• Staying grounded by knowing that he is just a vessel with a message who is part of something so much bigger than him
• Starting with self love - heal, educate
• Conditioning that has bred fear of difference
• Coming together with an intent to heal, love and listen. 
• Having real conversations which are birthed out of truth

Mitch Tambo Instagram
Mitch Tambo - You're the Voice


Keen to buy the Futuresteading book? Its now available at all good bookstores or you can order online here.

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This heart led Mumma of three has been luring us with images of a dreamy, bloom filled life on her Daylesford apple orchard & words of equal romance via her craft blog for over a decade. She laughs easily, has found balance in being real & makes the simplest of thoughts feel like genuine aha moments.  Kate Ulman is wrenchingly honest about the reality of farm life with young children, turning inwards when self care is needed & whether her babies will return to life on the land. Although not at her kitchen table, the intimacy of this conversation feels very personal & will leave your cup full & your heart nourished.

Episode notes

• Seeing your home the way others do
• Realising she is driven by making, creating & beauty
• Taking an ugly foundation & making it ‘beautiful’ slowly & sure
• The essence of a creative soul raising more creative beings
• Evolving with our children who are becoming the people they are going to be
• Creating a ‘place’ for our children
• The impact of an early childhood experience on a kibbutz
• Learning to farm at 30 & retrospectively being amazed they could do it
• Growing things organically was our religion but we actually didn’t know how
• Life before social media - 10 years of ‘ugliness’ because we could afford the beautiful 
• Sharing the raw truth of life on the land with a small family
• Expectation vs reality
• Seasonal appreciation
• “Every season is another chance to get last years mistakes better”
• The annual pre Winter crises & assessment of reality
• Pre farming life as a crafter & blogger
• Acknowledging there's a time & place for everything
• Filing your soul with the small &simple things but being realistic about doing whats possible
• Being kind about expectations
• “Being a martyr & running yourself ragged is NOT the solution but being aware & keeping it joyful means you can do it forever”
• Saying “I don't know” comfortably
• When we take our actions so seriously that it puts other people including  the next generation off ever wanting to participate in something worth doing
•  Letting go of the little things like baking bread for the sake of the bigger picture
• Actively engaging with community wherever a snippet can be garnered
• Putting her energies into writing a book
• Taking back her families story so it wasn’t available to the world online
• Rediscovering herself post early childhood mother-dom
• Being the complete opposite of organised
• Creating a plan for ‘older life’ so the love of the farming life continues
• Why bigger is not better. The active vision to make things simpler
• Why her mum is her greatest inspiration for her approach to motherhood
• How she became the encourager of creativity
• Daily exclamation marks of ritual elude her because she follows inspiration instead
• Why her good intentions for ritual get forgotten
• Why deep diving quickly into real conversations is important to her
• Her definition of success as living her truth & being filled with honesty, creativity, availability to the things she cares about 
• Having the confidence to live from your heart
• Gifting your future self by thinking ahead

References

Fox’s Lane

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While the path has been somewhat short, this enigmatic & curious chic sees life through a different set of goggles making her excited about all the things she’s yet to learn. Trusting herself & letting faith hold her has made her the queen of the pivot, from culinary school to fireside cooking, cookbooks to online workshops, who knows what tomorrow looks like...for any of us. For now though she is living in Florida, working with the next generation of creatives & taking it one day at a time. 

She’ll boost your gumption & perhaps light a fire that sends YOU in a new direction too.

• Spontaneously moving back to Florida mid pandemic
• How fire catering became her thing
• Her winding & unexpected education path
• Why her collaboration with Louisa Brimble to create her cookbook series was  ‘Art in the making’
• Being thankful for longer journeys 
• Her artististic heritage & homeschooling childhood 
• Creative Sarah meandered via small business ventures & fell on her bum a few times
• Finding the balance between passion & monetised practicality
• Putting a price on your work as a creative who still needs to feed yourself
• The fear of failure in business, overcome by being humble & owning her foibles
• Taking wise counsel from our elders - finding mentors
• Growing up in the church resulted in an openness to receiving advice
• Pay for the help you need o cover  the skills you don’t have or don’t enjoy
• Guilding her clan - family first
• Separating business from personal
• Actively seeking mentorship as a key life pillar - creating a safe, trusted environment to grow.
• Rituals to reset & recalibrate; surfing, running, movement + reading, journaling, spiritual recheck
• Managing a balanced head + heart life
• The silver linings of making mistakes
• Losing  ‘sarah’ in the busy-ness
• Following her intuition to make the big decisions - taking a leap of faith
• Removing “stinking thinking” from your world
• Embracing WILD
• Talking to the next generation to inspire, upskill and connect
• The power of curiosity and endlessly asking questions
• Seeing with a new set of goggles and getting creative 
• Seeking the pivot as an opportunity to quench thirst & seek more knowledge
• Trusting & taking the first step in the direction of your dreams  - just start!

References

WILD cookbook
Sarah Glover - Instagram

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Catie chats with Dr. Sapphire McMullan-Fisher, an ecologist with a special interest in biodiversity conservation, particularly macrofungi and mosses.

Sapphire is a renowned scientific researcher, speaker, teacher and author with a knack for communicating fungi’s vital ecological roles — and why we should all pay a lot more attention to these remarkable, all-connecting entities.

She's is also a pretty radical member of the community here in Naarm/Melbourne, who last year let Catie + George transform her suburban backyard into a market garden through the Growing Farmers program. 

Wise, lively and friend of the fungi, enjoy this cracking convo with Sapphire McMullan-Fisher.

SHOW NOTES

• Being a Gondwanan
• Growing up in a mining town in the Pilbara.
• From saving African animals to fungi fascination.
• A fire and fungi pHD in Tasmania.
• Overcoming dyslexia in academia. 
• Ecosystems need fungi!
• Decomposition + partners of plants. 
• Why to leave the tree debris be.
• Journey back to the Carboniferous period when all the coal and oil was formed.
• Fungi eats wood, invertebrates eat fungi, birds eat invertebrates... hey presto!
• Life goes on. (Even though we’re seriously messing with systems.) 
• How an understanding of matter recycling gives an appreciation of post-humous existence.
• Patterns + process + life = wow.
• Where do humans fit in the bigger picture? Should we just hurry up and extinct ourselves, or…?
• Making space + food in your garden for other organisms who deserve to be here in the landscape. 
• How mindfulness of observing nature increase your understanding of it.
• Find the things that make your curiosity pop. 
• Ask: what is it? How do I found out more about it?
• Re-activating our patterning brain.
• Curiosity as a practice.
• Being on the spectrum as a superpower. 
• Growing up thinking you’re not clever. 
• Absorbing information in tiny little bites.
• Expanding communicating styles so that everyone gets it.
• How expectations shape your view of self. 
• Looking to ecosystems to confirm our need for diversity. 
• Allowing ourselves to learn and love learning.
• Biology is not a soft science!
• How a car accident changed everything. 
• Having trust that humans won’t be assholes.
• They say you need a village to raise a child… I need a village just to survive!
• The impossibility of going life alone.
• How do you learn to ask people for help?
• Letting people self select in how they help.
• Ways to be be radical and resist the status quo.
• Being sustainable within your limits.
• What’s the #1 priority in taking action for the world?
• Letting your inner child guide us towards more fulfilling life and work.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Growing Farmers
• Fun Fungi Ecology
• Fungi4Land on Insta

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Todays conversation (and the book he just wrote) is for anyone who eats. This much loved, story-telling fat pig farmer shares in very human terms why caring about soil is caring for the future of humanity.  And we feel sure that by end you too will be tapping a dance in support of our single greatest foundation for life. He takes a complex topic and makes us all want to fight for it from wherever we are, balconies, veggie patches, community gardens, small acreage or large scale farms. From gut biome and mental health to food production and climate change his words will remind us why humility is needed when it comes to dealing with the ecosystem which feeds us.

Episode Summary 

• Is soil science impenetrable? He wanted to make it accessible.
• Overcoming the identity crisis of soil via storytelling to activate imagination
• “ If we just think about soil as the stuff that gets between me and mashed potato then it will never get the attention it really deserves
• We have to make everyone care - and get as excited about it as the foundation
• The farming movement which is as interested in what happens below the soil as above 
• 98% of all our calories come from topsoil
• Australia's agricultural land has lost half of its topsoil in the last 200years
• Topsoil feeds us and we need to arrest the loss and cherish the change
• Why finding soil builders is more helpful than feeling fear
• It takes about 1000 years for nature to create 1cm of topsoil so we need to find a way to make it faster
•  Finding those who are growing topsoil faster, learning from them and leap frogging
• Super big brained soil scientists combined with ancient wisdom is demystifying and reassuring 
• The super power of solidarity and sharing
• Being comfortable with your “work in progress” as temporary custodians
•  We are only one very small part of a long time scale 
• Home gardener super heroes not to be underestimated 
• Every bit of soil matters; pot plants, lawn, vegie garden, community gardens
• Small domestic gardens feed 1 billion people globally. 70% of food grown in the world is grown in domestic environments 
• Most of where we live is former food growing land but can  we reignite it for food production again
• Bringing our children up to value soil and farming while being engaged in a world that is interesting to them.
• Honest insights into parenthood as a farmer 
• How to bring a  relentlessly stimulated culture on a slow and gentle journey
• The 'Old Friends and hygiene' hypothesis'
• Embracing a world which is dominated from bacteria  - accepting we are PART of it and healthier when entrenched in it.
• The interconnectedness of how we exist in the world
• We haven't been humble enough to recognise that the thing which feeds us properly needs to be allowed to do its thing properly. 
• The miracle of watching seeds grow. 
• Nature’s on our side but we have to give it a chance.
• Caring about soil is caring about  the future of humanity. We really all need to care about its fate and currently we don't.
• Fat Pig Farm
• Soil

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Annie Raser-Rowland is the co-author of two of our most treasured books; The Weed Forager’s Handbook and The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More. Annie is an artist, horticulturalist and adventurer who has a knack for thwacking you with the truth -- in the best possible way.

If you don't know this marvellous lass, that's probably because she keeps a pretty low profile online, preferring to spend her days in a state of sensuous connection with the world, pursuing everything money can't buy. And she has some excellent tips for helping you do the same.

Annie and Catie cover a lot of ground in this convo, from hitchhiking adventures and weed foraging to chronic conditions, choosing life over career and controversial acts in the face of climate change.  We know we say this every time... but this one's a goodie!

SHOW NOTES

• Single parent family taught her to be independent, responsible, frugal.
• Epic hitchhiking journeys around Australia.
• Discovering different ways of having fun that don’t cost money.
• When hitchhiking becomes a form of talk therapy.
• Attention as a practise.
• What to do when Monkey Mind takes over and you stop seeing the beauty in the everyday.
• Humans as story-addicted creatures.
• Solistalgia — when you’re nostalgic for where you are.
• The rate of change in modern society and how that disrupts a sense of place, belonging.
• How to plant yourself in new places. 
• The sensory pleasure of the weather.
• Weather makes landscape and landscape makes culture.
• The origins of her love of weeds.
• Plant-filtering laser eyeballs that seek out food.
• There’s food you can eat that has zero environmental impact,  beyond homegrown veggies.
• Writing a novel in celebration of non-utilitarian, fruity, hyper-abundant language.
• How a cancelled hike led to a quirky storyline.
• How to orchestrate a life in which time and adventures are plentiful.
• The beauty of turning down requests (even when they’re super impressive).
• The conscious choice not to have children.
• Giving work the flick in favour of life.
• How a chronic health condition has affirmed her choices and priorities.
• "I’d rather not eat out, not buy new clothes, and spend lots of my time at the beach (which is what I’m currently doing)."
• Dealing with guilt about working less.
• Why keep trying to accrue more money more once you have enough?
• Protestant work ethic upbringing needs to be questioned right now.
• The ‘work’ of being a low-consumer is valid too.
• “I believe in the pattern of a society that these frugal habits are part of… and I want to perpetuate that.”
• Controversial tips for changing the world.
• Amazement as a tool for appreciating ordinary objects; being less wasteful.
• It’s a novel time. The rules are now different. Having children being the norm can no longer be part of the status quo. 
• Drive less! Use your car if you would hire a car to do that thing, otherwise, find a different way.
• Good times with human beings is not something to be lazy about. 
• Cultivating the skill of conversation. 

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

The Weed Forager's Handbook ~ Annie Raser-Rowland & Adam Grubb
The Art of Frugal Hedonism ~ Annie Raser-Rowland & Adam Grubb

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From confident whizz kid to suffering imposter syndrome - heck haven’t we all - this accomplished millennial spokeswoman and now author shares her tales of covid motherhood, the power of stories to ground us and working through the bravado to pop out at her truth.

We like to call her Pacey Stacey-June, she thinks, speaks and acts at a cracking rate but despite this, has a gentle, soulful sense of wisdom and refreshing honesty.

SHOW NOTES

• Her 2020 reality: Editing a book, having a baby and living life in lockdown
• Beating one beat ahead of her surroundings
• Lockdown lessons - thriving in ISO
• Reasons to ‘get real’ fast
• The difference between the medium of audio and the medium of written words
• What gave her Imposter syndrome and how storytelling reassured her
• The truth of writing and rewriting a manuscript BEFORE you send it to the editor
• Working through the bravado and digging to the truth of not knowing everything
• The confronting challenge of embracing shortcomings
• The broken nature of our education system which creates self doubt and builds walls
• Owning  “Author-dom”
• Learning to have a better conversation with your intuition and trusting your instinct
• Why she things there’s really only a handful of feelings
• Transitioning from passionate, ambitious and self focused pre motherhood to being humbled by a new born which has taught me the most epic lessons of my life.
• Redefining her values following motherhood
• Her curiosity for other womens stories and why she honors them to rebut the patriarchy
• Having to hunt out stories of people who represented her 
• The bullshit theory that all women in the sisterhood should get along but acknowledging that a feminine energy connects us and gives us strength 
• “Women have more in common than not and if we could just get past the bullshit then we could definitely  build a sisterhood that holds us”
• The difference between community and having a lot of people in our life
• Getting past shallow connections, demanding we give more of ourselves in return for a robust community to be wrapped around us
• How motherhood helps you to build a community
• Building self through repetitive practices 
• Finding quiet so her inner voice will speak to her rather than her speaking to it.
• Giving her intuition a name “my divine”
• Honouring anxiety by giving it enough quiet time
• The value of creating flexible plans rather than rules so you don’t feel like you’ve broken an agreement
• The difference between her public and her private profile
• The value of protecting her intimate self by taking a deep breath before oversharing in a public realm.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

Self care club

Single Pringle -  Stacey June

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As publisher of Dumbo Feather & Co-owner of Small Giants, Berry is one heck of a leader who doesn’t shy away from wearing her heart, beliefs and the paradox of life on her sleeve. In her own words she is ‘living with meaning in this one wild & precious life’ & as a master of language this interview will challenge you, pave the road for asking questions & fill you with fierce hope.

SHOW NOTES

• Being a good ancestor by leaving a legacy
• Adulting = knowing your decisions leave an impact
• Being shocked into asking essential questions
• Sitting in the uncomfortable truth to work things out owning your identity & bringing weight to your beliefs
• Activism & violence is correlative - group think thrives in this environment
• The grandchild of holocaust survivors, the daughter of a refugee entrepreneur - her intergenerational trauma gives her strength to take an opinion
• Her interest in the moderate centre for a radical shift
• Navigating her kids through the complexity of being culturally different
• Being proximate to the issues we need to put our efforts into 
• Why we need to have opinions despite living in a world of cancel culture
• Rehumanise, relocalise & embrace hard conversations respectfully
• The value of finding wisdom without action
• Bringing the three dimensional view of hands, head and hard to the table with kindness & generosity.
• Creating online communities which are nourishing & useful not toxic and depleting
• Pulsing so you can continue to show up
• Building touchstones of people who are conscious, emotionally intelligent, empathetic
• Minimising the obsession with the ego. Why the hero’s journey is a false narrative
• Shit gets interesting when we are awake to the beauty of this incredible planet
• The subtle shift of changing your thoughts from things happening ‘to’ me to things happening ‘for’ me
• We can all own a regenerative, restorative future but we need to do this together
• The fraught promise of collaboration
• Ownership means nothing but everything
• Become an elder by taking ownership of actions
• Why context matters
• Using AND instead of BUT so you don’t negate everything you’ve already said so you can hold multiplicity & not be reductionist
• Living meaningfully in this one wild & precious life.
• Being inspired by language - the most incredible technology we’ve invented

QUOTES

“If you keep things in, you project things out, the shadows can haunt you”
“It’s easier to have a broad tent of acceptance when those you are engaging are proximate”
“If I haven’t metabolised my story, I can't be of use to the future”
“Australians weren’t born into hatred of the “other”

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

Dumbo Feather - publication
Small Giants - Academy
An inconvenient truth - film
Nature and the human soul - Bill Plotkin
Donut Economics - Kate Raworth
Regen Melbourne - Small Giants

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Jade takes a peek inside the clever, creative and quietly brilliant world of Natasha Morgan. 

Natasha is, in her own words, a landscape architect and urban designer by profession, and a multi-disciplinary creative collaborator by natural inclination. Anyone who’s been to Natasha’s design hub and home, Oak and Monkey Puzzle, can attest to that.

After throwing career caution to the wind and enrolling herself in the school of life, Natasha and family embarked on a major tree-change from Melbourne to a five acre property in rural Victoria, learning to live with the seasons, grow and gather, preserve, make and embed themselves in place.

This honest and passionate conversation reveals what it’s like to relinquish international renown and kindle a simple existence in partnership with nature. Clairvoyant chooks included.

SHOW NOTES

• Blooming independence that came from her childhood
• Her mum's immigration story 
• A childhood love of getting in the dirt to grow things 
• Architecture to landscape architecture and then urban design and place making.
• “During my times of greatest challenge, I gardened my way through it.”
• How people connect with places and the stories of the landscape
• “My real curiosity about people developed as I developed curiosity about myself.”
• Creating immediacy with her endeavours
• A desire to build a life via the disparate threads of interests she had.
• Despite managing a 17 million dollar project, she couldn't get her child to sleep 
• How a humble chalkboard was the catalyst to create an entirely new life 
• The complexity and celebration that comes with collaboration.
• Seeking solace and inspiration in your surroundings
• “I’ve never in my life had such a deep respect for soil, sun and water - they've become my currency.”
• “While I can’t change the world around me, I can change this five acre plot.”
• Coming to peace with the severity of seasonality and the cyclical nature of growing food
• “The seasons are like old friends - they bring a reverence for what’s around us.”
• The role of chickens in settling a 10 year old autistic mind
• Creating an immersive life with kids so their imaginations can thrive
• Acknowledging the grief that comes with an autism diagnosis
• While neuro-diversity is ‘bloody hard’ it’s also an incredible gift 
• Reconnecting with the inner - “No amount of accolades could give me the joy I get from seeing my children find the first pine mushroom of the season."
• Making space for experiences rather than things.
• Transitioning slowly and intentionally via storytelling
• How sharing a dream bought bigger ideas to fruition incrementally
• You don't need a lot to do something, but being curious is the first step.
• Changing your life within your areas of influence.
• "I let gardening be the one thing in my life that I didn't have to be in control of. It gave me permission to make mistakes."

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Natasha + Oak and Monkey Puzzle on Insta
• The Peace of Wild Things ~ Wendell Berry
• Milkwood Permaculture

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Helena Norberg-Hodge is a writer, filmmaker, international speaker and leader of the global localisation movement. 

She’s been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than 40 years, and is one of the world’s most treasured environmentalists and visionaries.

Today Helena pulls up an apple crate at the Futuresteading campfire to share stories from Ladakh, lament the madness of globalization and light the way back (and forward) to oneness.

We discuss the true wealth of traditional societies, the dangers of scale and tech solutions, pressure to conform to a consumer monoculture, and the real economy of Mother Gaia. 
Oh, she’s brilliant folks. We’re so excited to welcome you into this conversation. 

SHOW NOTES

• How she ended up on a remote plateau in Tibetan India.
• Discovering the healthiest, happiest, most peaceful people she had ever met.
• Existing under surveillance in times of political tension.
• The true wealth of traditional societies.
• Why people everywhere are being pressured to conform to a consumer monoculture.
• A  need for a deeper dialogue between the west and the global south.
• The path of separation; being herded into urban centres and separated from the land. 
• Instead of being dependent on the land, we became dependent on enormous institutions to meet our needs.
• Manufactured scarcity.
• The luxury of using more energy per person per capita… is it actually a luxury?
• Policy change is needed to make decentralisation possible
• Pollies on auto-pilot re. urbanisation. Governments are separating us from the sources of our food, creating unsustainable, toxic, energy-hungry situations in the name of growth.
• Why most people are getting poorer despite our obsession with growth. 
• Towards smaller towns and smaller cities. 
• When you shorten the distance between farm and table, you have market pressure towards diversity.
• What happens when people are replaced by energy and technology.
• Stay away from the propaganda that’s saying we need technological fixes.
• In Ladakh, everyone grows up with a multi-dimensional knowledge of how to grow, build, make clothes, dance, create. 
• How modernity negatively affects young people versus radiantly confident youth in Ladakh.
• Australia flies food to China to be processed before being flown back again.
• The things we aren’t hearing about in the climate movement.
• Are people in power totally evil? 
• Localisation is a clear path towards systemic healing.
• Simple policy changes can catalyse radical change.
• Why there is no distinction between human and non-human life.
• There is a huge awakening happening! 
• The real economy is Mother Gaia.
• We aren’t so greedy after all.
• What happens when we create human-scale interventions. 
• Experiencing oneness and the fabric of interdependence via localisation.
• World Localization Day! What it’s about and how you can get involved.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• World Localization Day
• Local Futures
• Noam Chomsky
• Small is Beautiful ~ E F Schumacher
• Naomi Klein
• Russel Brand
• Brian Eno

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