You’ve heard of swales… but what about swales in the brain to slow and deepen our human experience? Join me and Cecilia Macaulay for one of those special convos that gets to the heart of life’s gnarliest struggles; our biggest messes, our greatest failures, our everyday chaos… and uses permaculture design to harness their power.

This episode will particularly chime with “forgetful, distractible” types, clutter accumulators, chaos agents, overwhelm junkies, and anyone with a hunch that a few elegant household systems could MASSIVELY increase their effectiveness in the world.

WE COVER

Insane wisdom from Bill Mollison

Meeting Masanobu Fukuoka

The FIVE RULES OF HARMONIOUS PERMIE SHAREHOUSES

Japanese rules of Non-Complaint and Taking Full Responsibility

Growing an enduring permaculture spirit

How to become a world expert in a tiny little thing

Creating a failure protocol

Upward spirals

Permaculture for heartbreak

Being an effective human later in life

More than medication for neurodiversity

The connection between untidy houses and trauma

Making your kitchen sink a shrine to beauty and goodness

Setting a household culture using mirror neurons

The eco-footprint of university

STOP AWFULISING!

Permaculture zones in the home

Why to share what’s spare

STOP COLONISING CREATIVE VOID!

Expanding the edges of our gifts and talents

Beautiful messcapes

Knolling

What “can’t be bothered” really codes for

How to use imagination to improve your memory

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Cecilia’s home on the web

Cecilia’s nine month home harmonising project

The Edible Balcony Garden ~ Indira Naidoo

Sand Talk ~ Tyson Yunkaporta

Screen Zen App

WWOOF, HelpX & Workaway

Polyvagal theory

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Thanks to kangaroovindaloo for the singing bowls: License: Attribution 4.0

Big personal shares at the top of the ep (preview: podcasting terrifies me) before an utterly delightful conversation with Scots folk singer Josie Vallely aka. Quinie.

Quinie's album Forefowk, Mind Me was named The Guardian's best folk release of 2025, but don't worry if you're not into bagpipes because we mostly chat about:

Not making your art your career

Tips for slow art/seasonal living in a rushing world

The mind bending differences between relating with Country in Australia versus Scotland

Minority languages and evocation of place

The right to roam

Confused white settler syndrome

When you’re a cultural mongrel

Impure ancestry

Place as a surrogate elder

Tradition in motion

Where do songs live?

Journeying on horseback

Horses as bodyguards

Why we all just want to be got

🧙‍♀️LINKY POOS

Quinie’s home on the web

Quinie on Instagram

[album] Forefowk, Mind Me ~ Quinie

Quinie’s seasonal almanac ~ Things that happen every year in a cycle

[film] Forefowk, Mind Me 

Guardian review of Quinie’s album

Cover art photo credit: Anthony Rintoul

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A garden drama unfolds during a heatwave, and I share my summer solstice/New Year wishes for you.

Thanks for tuning into another year of Reskillience! We'll be back later in January full of fresh questions and custard. 

Shout out to my love Jordan Osmond for helping produce this episode.

Sound credit: BlackbirdFiltered.wav by acclivity 

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Cor blimey, we're getting equiney! Cast aside your Saddle Club trauma and learn how horses can help us be better humans and stewards of nature in this rich convo with Lisa Podosin.

Lisa is a horse listener, advocate and author who swapped Hollywood for a tiny home on shared land with a herd of seven horses. We get real deep on topics of:

🐴 not putting off till retirement what you wanna do today

🐴 choosing freedom over security at any age

🐴 land sharing gifts and tips (single women supporting women!)

🐴 how horses as prey animals reveal our inner misalignment

🐴 moving beyond control-based strategies (bridles, saddles, whips) and towards trust

🐴 how to be agents of liberation for both the more-than-human world and our own wild souls

🐴 learning interspecies communication

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Lisa’s home on the web

Pre-order Lisa’s book

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Thanks for the birdsong straget! Blackbird.wav by straget | License: Attribution 4.0

You want it, you got it: an open discussion about the cracks in our civilisation, and how to catch each other when it all falls apart.

Dave Pollard has been writing about culture, complexity, deep ecology and collapse for longer than some of us have been alive. While he continues to cheer on radical ‘deep green’ activists, he no longer believes that that we can change or reform The System. This convo is about what to do instead.

[first aired in 2023]

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Dave's writings

Dave’s recommended reading list ~ The Books That Have Influenced Me Most

Dave’s article ~ How Do We Teach the Critical Skills Needed to Face Collapse?

Molly Housch Gordon's piece ~ How to Survive the End of The World

[watch] The New Peasants by Happen Films

Could you live without money? No support payments, no savings account, no secret benefactors? 

Jo Nemeth has been doing so for the past decade, and reckons she is less stressed and more secure in her moneyless life (in which she shares a home with eight other humans and plays the role of house keeper/manager/grower/frugavore). 

This is a truly radical tale of a woman who went the whole hog and gave up the bacon 💰 to invest in relationships and reciprocity. We cover:

What is poverty/wealth?

Why live without money?

Jo has no hope!

Less money = more freedom

Why to be a home economist

Issues in a nine person household

The deliciousness of aligning your actions with your values

Moneyless gift giving, cravings, medical and more

Waste food seagull mode

Receiving is harrrrd

Kids + collapse

On taking care of things

Collapse priorities

Growing locally adapted food

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Jo’s home on the web

Jo on Instagram ~ @jolowimpact

Jo in the Guardian

Mark Boyle ~ The Moneyless Man + The Way Home

Eaarth ~ Bill McKibben

Luke Kemp ~ Goliath’s Curse

Artist As Family

The Art of Frugal Hedonism ~ Annie Raser-Rowland & Adam Grubb

The really really free market

Just Collapse

Sound credits: first raven, flock of ravens.

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I tell a story about becoming a gardening influencer before sharing an animated and long-awaited conversation with David Trood aka. The Weedy Gardener!  

Weedy, Jord and I discuss:

🌱 Creative land access

🌱 Body as compost

🌱 Hearing nature's call

🌱 Being an eye cell for humanity

🌱 Showing your failures

🌱 Why to love the small stuff

🌱 The all important nutrient cycle

🌱 Decomposing cane toad

🌱 Pest management, the Viking way

🌱 Rhizophagy

🌱 Nitty gritty on why organic produce is healthier

🌱 From grandpa bod to garden god

🌱 Weedy Garden Makeovers

🌱 Sacred social media spaces

🌱 Why garden?

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

The Weedy Garden on YouTube

The Weedy Garden online

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I tell a story about the ironic demise of my keepcup, and the difference between light green and deep green choices, before a pot-of-tea-convo with Laura Jean. Laura is a renegade business coach, dietician and permaculturalist who will help you see VALUES in a whole new light, and how to use them to illuminate the life/business/world you really want. Prepare to cry tears of recognition and possibility.

🐝 Building trust in yourself for changes that take courage

🐝 Eating disorder shares and healing strategies

🐝 The very worst thing that can possibly happen

🐝 Body check for making decisions

🐝 Do we change, or choose?

🐝 Laura’s values

🐝 Why we recreate the same old shit even when living “alternatively”

🐝 Figuring out your Bare Ass Minimum

🐝 The felt sense of success

🐝 Money as a tool to enact your values

🐝 Three steps towards a regenerative business

🐝 Commerce vs. capitalism

🐝 Activities for clarifying your values

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Laura on Instagram

Laura’s podcast 

Dietician Values

Gundaroo Growers

Canberra Environment Center

🙏 Yellow-tailed black cockatoo sound credit 🙏 

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Three unbelievable stories about owls, and how to be a myceliating, possibilitarian practivist with the phenomenal Morag Gamble.

Morag has cornflower blue eyes and a glorious crop of hair that curls at the ends like pea shoots. She consorts with broad beans and leafy greens in bare feet, and has sent no dig gardening viral on YouTube.

This convo was recorded at Crystal Waters Eco Village where Morag lives with her family and 200+ other humans on 640 acres shared with a teeming assortment of subtropical wildlife.

📝 SHOW NOTES

Building your livelihood around the seasons of your life

How to find your flow and live with intention

More than human helpers and teachers

“I am the garden gardening”

Ways to access land when accessing land is insane

Myceliating ideas around the world

Why aren’t permaculture villages everywhere?

Possibilitarianism

Nourish threads of connection rather than fighting the fight

How the new unfolds through collapse of the old

The vital role of the arts

How are we to live?

What is enough in these times?

Why permaculture is everything

Gift economy how-to

Do you have what it takes to be a permaculture teacher?

Integrating permaculture with your profession

Morag is a beloved permaculture teacher and designer, founder of The Permaculture Education Institute, pioneer of urban permaculture projects like Northey Street City Farm, and an international changemaker who has led changemaking programs in 22 countries.

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS

Morag’s home on the web

Morag’s podcast ~ Sense-making in a changing world

Morag on YouTube

Become a permaculture teacher ~ The Permaculture Education Institute

Rob Hopkins

Jeremy Lent

Schumacher College

Vandana Shiva

Arne Ness

Helena Norberg-Hodge

Fritjof Capra

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Can birdsong heal your hearing? Can a rainforest recruit humans to protect it? What is deep ecology, anyway?

Of all the approaches to “saving the world”, this one has my heart. Join me in conversation with elder John Seed as we get to the marrow of the environmental crisis, from the illusion of separation between human beings and nature, to the rituals, ceremonies and stories that can heal it.

About John Seed

Just last year at age 79 John was arrested for strapping himself to logging machinery in the Bulga State Forest, and has been awarded the Order of Australia medal for his services to the environment. John launched the Rainforest Information Center, has initiated global rainforest action networks and campaigns, developed The Council of All Beings with Joanna Macy, co-authored Thinking Like A Mountain with Joanna Macy Pat Fleming and Arne Ness, and spent decades facilitating experiential deep ecology workshops.

IN THIS CONVO

John’s story of being called into service by Nature

Collaborating with Joanna Macy

The root of the planetary crisis

Community therapies to heal civilisational wounds

Business As Usual, The Great Unravelling, The Great Turning

The Work That Reconnects

Activism as ceremony

The antidote to cultural amnesia

Why John loves podcasts!

How not to judge gross human behaviour

Honouring our pain for the world

Feelings as ancient intelligence

Can anyone run a grief circle?

The council of all beings

The cosmic walk

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS

John Seed’s home on the web

The Rainforest Information Center

[read online] Thinking Like A Mountain by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming & Arne Ness

Deep Ecology 

The Work That Reconnects

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Field recording credit: Thrushes, golden whistlers, yellow faced honeyeaters and a spotted marsh frog by Afro408 License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0