The RegenNarration

The world isn't broken, it's trying to save you. That's where this one starts. But first, a couple of announcements. One, the launch of a new series on the podcast called Vignettes from the Source. And two, 5x New York Times best-selling author and great friend of the podcast, Paul Hawken, has his extraordinary new book, Carbon: The Book of Life, out now on pre-sale (with a few copies for paid subscribers). He’s also launching and chatting about the book at a few events in California next week. 

Leading off the new series then, is what I’ve found to be an unforgettable last part of my conversation with Paul about the book last year, when we were bathed in sunshine in his home garden back in California. Listening back to it though, it could just as well have been recorded today. You’ll see what I mean.

So today features the last half hour or so of our conversation. In the first part, we talk about the new book, some profoundly wise words on the nature of story, and Paul's unflinching belief in people. Then the conversation shifts a gear, when I ask Paul about his experience with MLK Jr in Alabama as a teen, where he says in the book he witnessed a form of spirituality that really impacted him. I had been moving to wind up our conversation, but this last 15 minutes or so is straight from the source. 

It all culminates in a five-minute ‘world premiere’ reading of the last passage of the new book. If all you do is listen to that … 

Of course, if you’re inspired to listen to more, or to revisit the rest of this conversation, you’ll find it at episode 204. For now, I hope you enjoy this.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Conversation recorded on 27 April 2024. Intro recorded today.

Title slide: Paul Hawken (pic: Olivia Cheng).

See more photos on the website of ep.204 linked above, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Music:

Synergy, by TURPAC; One Love, by Roy Young; Circle of Life, by Letra (all sourced on Artlist).

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Welcome to a special 250th episode of the podcast! Are we on the cusp of a revolution in the nutritional content of our food? One that could change everything? Dan Kittredge thinks so. And he’s about to launch his next global effort to that end. 

When you get a chance to speak with the man who’s been called the global steward of nutrient density in food, the man who developed the very term ‘nutrient density’, you don’t necessarily expect it to go as big and broad as this conversation did. But then maybe should I have. 

Dan Kittredge is living one heck of a life, and as founder of the Bionutrient Food Association, goes as far as to say they're on the cusp of achieving their mission - that a revolution in the nutritional content of our food could happen within the next five years. It will be driven by farmers being rewarded for producing quality food, and set in tow enormous benefits for human and planetary health – from the physical to the meta-physical, and back again.

Indeed, this has been the nature of Dan’s journey, wandering from his roots with pioneering organic farming parents, across all sorts of intellectual and spiritual disciplines, experiencing the limitations of each, before arriving at an epiphany. 

Now he’s increasingly invited to engage with communities all around the world. And this month he launches a new program to spur the vision along. Those of us who won’t get to attend the program will get a chance to hear how it goes too, at the next major RegenWA Conference in Perth in September.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 14 February 2025.

Music:

Dan singing.

Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.

Together Road, by Paper Planes (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Find more:

My conversation with Fred Provenza.

And with Manchan Magan, igniting some of my ancestral roots. 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

‘School of Rock’ meets ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Damon Gameau, director of award-winning, chart-topping documentary films 2040, and That Sugar Film, takes eight kids on the ultimate school excursion: a road trip across Europe to challenge powerful leaders and find solutions to our greatest challenges. That’s how the bill reads for Damon’s new feature documentary film, Future Council. 

The group’s mission was to take the conversation from the streets, into the boardrooms of some of the world’s largest polluters and most influential companies. Astoundingly, it resulted in the children forming a ‘Future Council’ to advise and influence those companies. 

It also resulted in a transformative personal story for Damon. One of the most popular guests on this podcast, and a former award-winning actor, Damon had hit a self-described ‘swamp of sadness’. But as this film emerged, so did he. Some of this story isn’t quite ready for public consumption. But some of it, you’ll hear here. 

Along with some wonderful behind the scenes stuff, moments of revealing tension in the film, the challenge to even get it released, what else is going to happen as the film is released globally this year, and some amazing early reactions - including being invited to screen it at the UN.  

We talk soon after that took place, which also happened to coincide with the screening of the Kachana Station story on Australian Story late last year (now nearing 1m views). So we start with that. And we close with a rousing tune from Future Council’s soundtrack.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 4 November 2024.

Title slide: The Future Council with Damon Gameau.

For more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Music:

We are the Kids, by Bunny Racket.

Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.

Circle of Life, by Letra (from Artlist).

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Last month I had the honour of being a guest on the podcast of the legendary independent US media outlet Mongabay. It was a unique conversation, with US-born host Mike DiGirolamo based in Sydney, and me over here in the Americas, talking about some highlights from the seven months me and the family spent travelling across the USA last year, and relating it back to the seven years we’d travelled around Australia with the podcast before that. 

Mike produced a unique patch up too, interspersing our conversation with enlightening editorial additions, and some material from a past episode that was wonderful to hear again. Mongabay kindly invited me to release the episode on The RegenNarration too, so here it is, in full - a fascinating 'reverse' cross-continental exchange for the moment at hand.

You’ll hear some highlights from last year’s US journey, including more personal stories behind the journey, more detail on the hope we derived from listening to people on the ground in that election year, and the exchange I had with Allan Savory in Colorado. And all while Mike and I were inspiring thoughts in each other from our respective experiences as we went. 

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded mid-December 2024.

Title slide: Mike DiGirolamo.

For more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Music:

Intro music by Jeremiah Johnson.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Find more:

Hear more on the Haggerty’s early engagement with First Nations & how this is playing out on the farm now.

Ep.102 with Bruno Dann on Nyul Nyul Country.

The new Substack.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Welcome to a new year and new series of The RegenNarration! You might remember me talking last year with prominent author, documentary maker and farmer at Fat Pig Farm, Matthew Evans, in the lead up to the new festival he’s founded back home in Australia, called GROUNDED: the Food and Soil Festival. Well, that festival happened in early December, and a couple of weeks later I got back online with Matthew to talk about what happened, how it happened, and if it might happen again.

And hearing how his partner Sadie’s initial reaction to the festival was something like ‘wtf?’ only made me happier that she had accepted my invitation too. Aside from the fact that I’ve wanted to talk to her in her own right on this podcast for ages. (I don’t know that Matthew and Sadie have been on many podcasts together, so maybe I can even claim an exclusive!) 

This conversation felt a little different. You'll hear this couple’s customary candour, humour and insight, but also an acute dose of exhaustion and elation. And it ends fittingly, in that sense, with a moving moment and tune from the festival.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 18 December 2024.

Title slide: Sadie & Matthew (sourced here).

See more photos on the episode website, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Music:

My Mother, The Mountain, by Claire Anne Taylor.

Intro music by Jeremiah Johnson.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests (thanks to Josie Symons).

Find more:

The event with Charles Massy & the Pollocks that became ep.16. (Ep.20 features John Hewson with friend, and subscriber, James Tonson hosting.) 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Time to take a punt this year! I've just launched a Substack. Essentially, after 25 years in international and community development, and nearly a decade creating TheRegenNarration podcast, I began to feel something missing – the stories between the stories. The ones that don’t get on the podcast. And the ones that connect it all up - the themes, the people, the places.

I started to wonder if writing some of these stories would be fun and useful. All the more after hearing Rebecca Solnit affirm how vital they continue to be in shaping our sense of reality, agency and possibility (out of the LA fires). So here’s a little introduction to the what, why and how of it. Including how subscriptions will work through the Substack, alongside Patreon and Buzzsprout. 

You can also read about it on my launch post on Substack. Where you can also find my first article – a sort of foundation piece - out yesterday, from the ancient Mayan cities in northern Guatemala. All will be embedded with a little latent love of photography, and some tunes from time to time. Putting thesocial back in media. 

So if you fancy some of that alongside your podcast, you can subscribe on Substack here - free or paid. I hope you’ll join me there!

And standby for the new series of The RegenNarration podcast next week.

For more from behind the scenes, become a supporting listener or Substack subscriber via the links below.

Recorded 29 January 2025 in Antigua, Guatemala. 

Title slide: AJ recording this episode (pic: Olivia Cheng).

With thanks to you early Substack subscribers, and of course you enduring Patreon and Substack subscribers, and other donating supporters. None of this could happen without you. 

Music:

By Jeremiah Johnson.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Clinton Walker is a Ngarluma/Yindjibarndi man and Traditional Custodian of Murujuga (or Burrup Peninsula), on the north-west coast of Australia. You might recall my conversations with archaeologist Peter Veth and the co-authors of Songlines, Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale. They all related back to this place – where the Songlines start, as Clinton puts it. So as my family and I headed south from the Kimberley at the end of 2021, Clinton and I met up to record a yarn for the Clean State podcast. That was a shorter snappier format. But on this particular hot summer morning, with so much at stake here right now, and so much to appreciate about what he’s up to, Clinton and I settled in for an extended chat. Most of it became ep.109, still in the top 20 most listened to on this podcast. But today, for the first time, is our conversation in full.

Murujuga houses the largest rock art collection in the world – around one million petroglyphs, some dating back about 40,000 years. The World Heritage nomination for this place is a shoe-in, unless it’s jeopardised by current industry expansion plans. All this remains in play today, including the alternate vision Clinton puts forward, as a former technician with a mining company here, who now runs a highly successful business called Ngurrangga Tours.

Part of this episode was originally released as the last of the Clean State podcast. You can access the old Clean State Plan, and its brilliantly formatted Summary, towards the bottom of the episode web page (below).

For more from behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Recorded 13 December 2021.

Title slide: Clinton Walker (from his website). For more photos by AJ, head here.

With thanks to the CCWA, auspicing organisation for Clean State WA, for permission to re-release this series.

Music:
Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.
Regeneration, composed by Amelia Barden.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Jess Beckerling was Campaign Director of the WA Forest Alliance (WAFA) when we had this conversation (she’s currently put all aside to stand at the 2025 WA state election). Jess is a highly respected figure in the southern reaches of Western Australia, by both those who would traditionally have prioritised conservation, and those who might not have. I spoke with Jess back in July 2021 for the Clean State podcast. At the time, WAFA was seizing the opportunity it sensed to finally end native forest logging in WA.

With the comprehensive and poetically conceived Forests for Life Plan in hand, WAFA had been showing how we can stop bleeding finances, forests, farmlands and communities, and back in the growing suite of ecologically and economically beneficial industries. Come September, just two months after our conversation, the WA government agreed – and in an Australian first announced the end of native forest logging in WA. That end arrived at the start of 2024.

This is our conversation in full for the first time (previously having been restricted to a shorter episode on Clean State, and an excerpt of that on The RegenNarration). Then I’ve patched in Jess’s media statement from Parliament House on the dramatic day of the government’s announcement (a few minutes long), along with some of her comments.

Part of this episode was originally released as episode 8 of a series of 9 episodes for the Clean State podcast, dedicated to regenerative transitions in my home state of WA. Sadly, the podcast and its host non-profit are no more. But the episodes featured such brilliant guests and stories, that are still so very relevant, and not just to West Australians, so we resolved to re-release them here.

The Clean State Plan is on the episode web page below.

For more from behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Recorded 13.7.2021 & outside WA Parliament on 8.9.2021.

Title slide: Jess Beckerling (supplied).

With thanks to the CCWA, auspicing organisation for Clean State WA, for permission to re-release this series.

Music:
A Forests Dream, by Cloudjumper, sourced from the Free Music Archive.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Simon Wallwork and Cindy Stevens live with their three kids on a farm in Corrigin, in WA’s wheatbelt. In 2019 they joined a group of other producers to found AgZero2030, an agriculture-led movement progressing positive action on climate. Their goal? That agriculture achieves net zero emissions by 2030, and the drawdown of emissions after that. In other words, that agriculture go from being a key contributor to global warming and its increasingly catastrophic effects, to being a key contributor to reversing it, and regenerating ecosystems and economies everywhere. And they’re finding a way to connect with people and politics across the board, including First Nations knowledge and enterprise, to achieve it.

There was a bit of wind about on this day, but we took cover among the trees, grappled with mic changes, and got through mostly unscathed! Which was just as well, as this turned out to be a very personal conversation about the origins of AgZero2030, and a prescient one through to the present day, with an uncanny exchange on the trajectory of insurance in a warming world.

This episode was originally released as episode seven of 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 are still so very relevant, and not just to West Australians, so we resolved to re-release them here.

To hear the rest of the Clean State series, and more stories of regeneration from around WA, Australia and the world, follow The RegenNarration wherever podcasts are found, or on the website.

You can access the Clean State Plan, and its brilliantly formatted Summary, towards the bottom of the episode web page below.

And for more from behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Recorded at Kings Park, Perth / Boorloo on 11 March 2021.

Title slide: Simon & Cindy (supplied).

With thanks to the CCWA, auspicing organisation for Clean State WA, for permission to re-release this series.

Music:
Eden is Lost, by Selfless Orchestra.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

A brief but profoundly beautiful bonus episode of previously unreleased material with Maria Novac. Maria was a single mum with a family who had unexpectedly found herself in need of social housing, and landed in a neglected hot box. A chance encounter resulted in her becoming one of the social housing recipients whose life was transformed by Stephen King and the Australian Insulation Foundation.

If you’ve come here first, tune into the main episode 242 with Stephen King: ‘The Insulation Revolution: The ‘simple’ social enterprise model that inspired a state’.

To hear the rest of the Clean State series, and more stories of regeneration from around WA, Australia and the world, follow The RegenNarration wherever podcasts are found, or on the website.

Title slide: Stephen King and Maria Novak as they appeared in an article on this story (pic: Steve Grant, supplied).

And for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.

Music:
By Jeremiah Johnson.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!