A story about a free bottle of French perfume and whether sensitivity makes us more or less resilient. With esteemed and ever-so-lucid naturopath, herbalist & author Anthia Koullouros of Apothēca Organic Teas & Apothecary.

* What’s making us all so sick?

* How to untangle complex & confounding health crises

* Polyvagal theory & nervous system truths

* Practitioner perspectives: holding space for uncertainty

* What a regulated nervous system isn’t

* Resisting business growth & hustle culture

LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Anthia’s home on the web

Anthia’s Autumn reset [Starts March 17!]

Anthia on Instagram

Anthia on Substack

What is polyvagal theory?

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One of today’s guests spent seven years spinning a dress from stinging nettles and the other spent five years documenting the process. The result was the incredibly moving documentary The Nettle Dress — which I have now seen twice — co-created by Dylan Howitt and Allan Brown. 

It’s a love letter to old skills, hand crafts and everything that cannot be hurried; to fibersheds, foraged threads, gentle stories, and the magic of following your heart.

Dylan Howitt is a BAFTA nominated filmmaker whose roll call includes BBC, Netflix and Discovery. Allan Brown is a textile artist and subject of the film whose steady commitment to disrupting consumer culture is contagious.

It’s hard to sing The Nettle Dress’s praises highly enough without shattering a window, but I truly hope you’re moved to watch it after this conversation, perhaps with a posse of pals and a cauldron of nettle soup.

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 

***Watch The Nettle Dress***

The Nettle Dress’s home on the web

The Nettle Dress on Instagram

Short film & group ~ Nettles for Textiles

Flaxland UK

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Today’s subject matter is so slippery and mysterious that even my guest, Dr Maya Ward, finds it hard to describe, though she’s swimming in it. It concerns the aliveness of rivers and the rivers inside us; the nature of reality and realms invisible yet objectively real. It’s about catching the whispers and shouts of the world with pen and paper. It’s shamanic, ecstatic and emphatically esoteric. It’s bloody wild – and I suggest bringing your passport because the places this convo will take you are far out. But also, deep within. If you love all things complex, paradoxical and perspective-shifting, I dedicate this episode to you 🙌

After we recorded, Maya sent this thoughtful epilogue:

We are innately of the world, yet we are also this witness consciousness, experiencing separation. Forgetting, then remembering. “Inside human beings is where God learns”, said Rilke. Does separation itself create the possibility of learning? In my exhibition, on the wall, I have a quote from Robert Bringhurst: “Language is not for talking about the world – that's for dilettantes. Language is for talking with the world.” I wish I'd said that.

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🧵Threads

A new old way to introduce ourselves

Original meanings of yin and yang

The right ratio between humans and more-than-human

The role of the artist and poet

Ecstatic and mystical experiences in nature

Building beauty and vernacular architecture

Where a lack of trust in the system takes you

Initiated vs. uninitiated ways of being

Small, potent work

Third wheeling the love affair between sun and earth

Altered state work

The imaginal realm

Sufi mysticism

The danger of unwitnessed initiation

Automatic/shamanic writing

Reclaiming ‘esoteric’

Acknowledgement of Country spellcasting

🧙‍♀️LINKY POOS

Maya Ward’s home on the web

Maya’s events, workshops & exhibitions

Maya’s book: The Comfort of Water

Nature Based Leadership Training

CERES

William Wordsworth

Tyson Yunkaporta

Henri Corbin

Carl Jung

Rudolf Steiner

Plato

Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff

Gregory Bateson

Book: Songspirals ~ Gay’wu Group of Women

Alfred North Whitehead

Real good fun with this one! Join me and Formidable Vegetable’s kind and charismatic frontman Charlie McGee for a swashbuckling convo about pirate bananas, working the edges, growing up in Arnhem Land, dumpster diving to feed your art, staying in your integrity (while saying yes to flying), the deep discomfort of home ownership and remembering your interconnectedness.

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS

Formidable Vegetable’s home on the web

Grow Do It (Charlie & Brenna's hub of ecological goodness) 

Find secret track Pirate Banana on Formidable Vegetable’s Micro Biome CD, only available in person at gigs!

Vandana Shiva

Bill Mollison & David Holmgren ~ Permaculture One

***Become a legendary supporter of the podcast on Patreon***

I tell a story about how Jord and I narrowly avoided getting shot before introducing Tanya Loos – local treasure and legendary naturalist – for a deep and meaningful chat about wild life, and all life. We cover:

• How to be a nature positive pet owner
• Are cats evil?
• How to save a bunch of lives
• Gardens as habitat
• The housing crisis facing possums (and other critters)
• How to recklessly pursue your passion and make it your profession
• GETTING THE ANIMALS ON THE ARK
• How to avoid roadkill (even frogs)
• Bee feelings + monogamous lizards
• The intersection between conservation, permaculture & animal welfare
• Patreon Qs
• 24/7 nature connection
• Beetle Pace

LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Tanya Loos’ home on the web

Tanya on Instagram

Living with Wildlife ~ Tanya Loos

Daylesford Nature Diary ~ Tanya Loos

Tanya on ABC Radio ~ Backyard Critters (every second Friday 9.50am)

Paradise Bookshop Daylesford

Wild Neighbours ~ Ian Temby

Campaspe Valley Landcare

Gerald Durrell

Connecting Country

Zoos Victoria Safe Cat, Safe Wildlife

Alison Pouliot

iNaturalist

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Frog sounds care of markushablizel -- https://freesound.org/s/32394/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 THANKS M8

It's the season three finale with me and my man Jordan Osmond!

We’re cranking the content couple cringe in this convo which covers our individual intentions for 2025, and chatting them through like a pair of old codgers.

Jordan is one half of Happen Films, sharing stories for a more beautiful world, and precisely one year ago we recorded a Reskillience interview which was later to become our first date.

Back with new eps in three weeks or less 💥

Big love to all the legends supporting the show on Patreon <3

The episode that nearly didn’t happen for reasons almost too embarrassing to share… but what else is the intro for? 🤷‍♀️

Today we’re hanging out with CAROLINE PARKER ~ The Cottage Herbalist ~ bigtime girl crush and quite possibly the love child of a 1950s rock star and wiccan goddess.

Caroline is an author, speaker, grower, educator, forager, herbalist and award-winning teasmith who is just TOO COOL.

We bask in her garden eating elderflower cookies talking about treat-os, herbal speed dating, what to cook when you CBF cooking, the cuppa that Caroline would serve to power hungry pollies and why she’s not a prepper.

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS

Caroline’s witchy little home on the web

Caroline aka. The Cottage Herbalist on Instagram

Caroline’s book baby ~ The Medicinal Garden

Caroline’s upcoming workshops

[FILM] The Nettle Dress

***Support Reskillience on Patreon!***

1. Make a garden tea
2. Make herby sauce
3. Make pesto!
4. Make herbal infused oils
5. Make a garden balm
6. Get into the garden!
7. Make time for thyme
8. Yarrow, yarrow, yarrow
9. Make people in power a cup of love
10. Garden with others

After countless requests I present to you: Kat Lavers 🐈‍⬛

Wicking buckets, magic bug buttons, interspecies adventures, listener questions and more!

Kat and I recorded this convo at her kitchen table, surrounded by ferments and preserves and garlands of dried chilli.

At just 1/14th of an acre, Kat's urban homestead The Plummery has been known to pump out 428kg of fresh produce in any given year, meeting almost all the fruit/veggie requirements for two people. I M P R E S S I V E  S T U F F.

Kat is a beloved permaculture educator, passionate gardener, and sustainable food system furtherer whose compassion for all living things could fill five football stadiums, whilst also being the poster child for small wonders.

You may have seen Kat featured on Gardening Australia, Happen Films, myriad permie/green media channels, and in this one-and-a-bit hour yarn we plumb the depths of her mind, heart and utterly delightful psyche through her list of 10 things. 

LINKY POOS

Kat’s home on the web

Kat on Instagram (which she doesn’t really use)

Wildlife Homestead YouTube Channel

[BOOK] Once ~ Annie Raser-Rowland

Reskillience with Annie Raser-Rowland

The Group Work Center ~ Groups + Facilitation training

***join the Reskillience community on Patreon***

Are bees a mammal in many bodies?

Why do conventional beehives leave bees cold, stressed and defensive?

How can beekeepers deal with varroa mite without any chemicals?

Do European honeybees even belong in Australia?

What is Australia’s best honey and where to get it?

All this and more in today’s GLORIOUS conversation with leading natural beekeeper Adrian Iodice. Such a special one folks 🐝🐝🐝

LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

The Beekeeping Naturally website

Adrian on Insta

Adrian’s courses & workshops

Adrian’s Kenyan Top Bar hives

Adrian’s YouTube channel – so many how-tos

Embody Bee

Save the Bees Australia

Biodynamics – Tobias Mager

Tim Malfroy ~ Malfroy’s Gold

Natural Beekeeping Australia

***Support Reskillience on Patreon!***

If you prefer nature to people, birdsong to screeching tyres and secretly want to crash the economy via mass workplace dropout due to a bird language contagion, you will go absolutely crackers for this convo.

Andrew Turbill aka. THE BIRD GUY is here to share his epic and somewhat perilous birding quests for 2025, from stalking Logrunners to sidestepping fascists and recording a full blown predator attack in the sky.

F****** fabulous listening for anyone under the spell of birds. 

Andrew’s 2025 to-do list

1. find out where our local superb lyrebirds (well, at least 1 lyrebird anyway) nest and get an audio recording of the young bird begging or alarm calls
2. get a decent photo of a logrunner
3. build an elevated sit spot platform in the forest
4. spend more time in the forest socialising with songbirds and less time doom-scrolling about the callous and cruel manifestations of psychopaths, narcissists and fascists
5. record audio of a full-sequence aerial predator attack
6. keep my bird baths full 365 days of the year
7. devise a way to dissuade catbirds and fairy-wrens from mercilessly pummeling my windows at dawn throughout spring and summer
8. find someone desperate enough to make some walking-around money to enter 30 years of my naturalist seasonal field observations into a data base or excel spreadsheet so i make some effing sense of them
9. take on a bird language apprentice
10. visit my mum more often

LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Andrew Turbill’s online nest 

Andrew on ABC Radio National

You were once a Bird Language Samurai, and can be again ~ Andrew Turbill

Megalania goanna!!!

Jon Young

Voices of birds page on Andrew’s website

Upcoming Bird Language events + retreats

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