186. 2023 RegenNarration Soundtrack: Highlights from our guests this year
Dec 20, 2023Season 7
Anthony James
Welcome to the customary package of highlights from another brilliant array of guests throughout 2023, accompanied by some of the music and sounds of Country heard along the way. Our guests were farmers, artists, First Nations, entrepreneurs, investors, former miners, migrants, health professionals, writers, journalists, facilitators, producers, consultants, researchers, diplomats, political economists, permaculturalists, market gardeners, chefs and more; some famous, many not, of all ages, from right around Australia and the world. It’s all put together here in what sums to a feast of uplift, fun, beauty, guts and love.
The RegenNarration podcast is independent, ad-free & freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you too value what you hear, please consider joining them by clicking the link above or heading to our website.
Become a member to connect with your host, other listeners & benefits, via our Patreon page.
Visit The RegenNarration shop to wave the flag. And please keep sharing, rating & reviewing the podcast. It all helps.
Welcome to the customary package of highlights from another brilliant array of guests throughout 2023, accompanied by some of the music and sounds of Country heard along the way. Our guests were farmers, artists, First Nations, entrepreneurs, investors, former miners, migrants, health professionals, writers, journalists, facilitators, producers, consultants, researchers, diplomats, political economists, permaculturalists, market gardeners, chefs and more; some famous, many not, of all ages, from right around Australia and the world. It’s all put together here in what sums to a feast of uplift, fun, beauty, guts and love.
The RegenNarration podcast is independent, ad-free & freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you too value what you hear, please consider joining them by clicking the link above or heading to our website.
Become a member to connect with your host, other listeners & benefits, via our Patreon page.
Visit The RegenNarration shop to wave the flag. And please keep sharing, rating & reviewing the podcast. It all helps.
You're with the regeneration, exploring how people are enabling the regeneration of life on this planet by changing the systems and stories we live by.
Speaker 4:
I watched him do that and one guy asked him well, how do you get people to change paradigm if that's how they grow up and that's their religion? He said well, that's your job. I figured out the problem and it had a huge effect on me. I took the answer personally. I'm supposed to be how to help people change paradigm.
Speaker 6:
So it really is trying to see these solutions in a much more holistic manner, and sometimes we get caught in this sort of carbon tunnel syndrome in Australia or just looking at emissions and we really don't look at the land and the soil and the water cycles of the planet and the habitats. So we really have to approach this in a much more holistic way than we have been and see that our architecture of our system, the engine of our economy, is causing all these things.
Speaker 7:
When we see this happening, what we're really talking about is a cultural shift that these women are leading here, in which we re-envision the way and community engages with agriculture, and so it's not about soil management in the end. In some ways, it's really about reconnection on every level, and that's my one word definition of regeneration is reconnection, because it works on every level.
Speaker 8:
It was a school project originally that challenged us to do something to give back to the community or the environment, or just the world, I guess. So I like drawing and I like reptiles and stuff, so I was like let's just put it together.
Speaker 2:
I don't believe in despair. We've seen too many unexpected things happen, good and bad, that it would be presumptuous and arrogant to believe that I knew what the future holds. We have to accept that over my right shoulder or your left shoulder can be some solution. We don't know and we don't know and we can't say it's coming either, just that that's a possibility.
Speaker 5:
It's a possibility.
Speaker 3:
The band is also on tour now. The link to all that is also in the show notes.
Speaker 9:
I don't believe in despair. I want to bring it back home to a simple piece of ground. Been talking about it till my mouth is dumb, but all I want to do is make a deeper connection with some Earth people fail. Well, I've been looking for the Earth people fail. Well, show me where to find the Earth people fail.
Speaker 10:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I haven't noticed it. I've noticed it quite a lot. It's been that shift, unfortunately. I think it's because it's hit a lot of people's backyards, like different experiences, like we see the fires and the floods and things like that, and it's just kind of and then COVID made everyone just pause and kind of reassess and think about things and we've just seen an uptake of it happen, almost like from about 2018. It's just continued to grow and grow. Earth people fail. Earth people fail. Well, I've been looking for the Earth people fail. Well, show me where to find the Earth people fail.
Microbiome. Oh, what have you done to me? We're all entangled together in one living community. Microbiome, you're a key to my survival.
Speaker 11:
I'm the deep dark of my insides to my ocean of saliva.
Speaker 9:
Oh, my co-organisms all over my system. I've got a suspicion that we're one and the same.
Speaker 12:
We will only be transformative if it is what I believe and we believe it is. It's part of life's evolutionary regenerative impulse. It's realigning with our own ancestry, as you alluded to it. Like we, we are so distracted by destruction, from destruction, that we don't know how powerful we can actually be when we work in that way.
Speaker 9:
My girl. This might sound kind of insane. Yeah well, maybe I'm crazy, but it's like you're some kind of giant brain. Oh, my grove I own. I don't know if we're one or a hundred trillion and two, because you just make up my whole world. So I gotta be good to you. Oh, microorganisms all over my system. I've got a suspicion that we're one and the same.
Speaker 3:
You're with the regeneration the story of how people are regenerating cultures to enable country to regenerate itself.
Speaker 13:
I'll just give native grains a plug, then. This is a solution to all of those things Food security, healing country. Well, these grains, along with perennials. So they put carbon back in the soil. Their root systems go two metres into the soil and that's carbon. They're self mulching carbon into the soil. They filter the water. You don't need any pesticides, you don't need any fertilizer. They are ridiculously healthy. You want a sustainable, healthy food crop. Don't go to almonds, go to these. It's all of those things and more.
Speaker 3:
It's self-organising listener-supported media, ad-free, freely available, and live from the streets of Brisbane.
Speaker 15:
It's not like we created this system. We just started doing it a certain way and it just magnets people and plants and animals. I felt like we're drawn to it because it's all in it.
Speaker 14:
You and I were in the city and feeling disconnected. We definitely aren't the only ones. A lot of people in the city. Cities can be incredible and they can be a really effective way of housing a growing population of people. The reality is that those people still have this sense of contentment and they're not as connected to the land as what they probably, and lately, should be. People do have that innate feeling that once they come out to a property like this, something just feels right. It happens to almost every single person that comes out here. That is a beautiful, beautiful thing that we love, that we can share with people.
Speaker 3:
Some of you probably heard the new music I featured from Filmittable Vegetable earlier this year and sit speaking with Alice and Phil. This older track has been playing in my mind, so I'll leave you with no Such Thing as Waste. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 9:
No Such Thing as Waste. Misusing Waters, ain't this great? Moved to the city, rented a house on my way to buy a bed, so I'm lying on the side of the road, so I took that one instead, and I also found a fridgey couch and a big old plasma screen and the biggest pile of thrown out stuff that I had ever seen. But there's no such thing as waste, only stuff in the wrong place. There's no such thing as waste that old last year is a disgrace.
Speaker 16:
So there's an opportunity for things that emerge under the shade of these collapsing behemoths. So educational institutes that might not necessarily be traditionally corporate in this way Corporative universities, as they are happening in England, in Spain, in the US, in Argentina. So there are all these models of non-corporate entities that operate as universities, delivering the same degrees for a tenth of the price, with ten times the satisfaction for staff, students and the public. So this is Emerging Everyone.
Speaker 9:
Only stuff in the wrong place. I said there's no such thing as waste. That old idea's gotta be replaced.
Speaker 3:
Good day there. Jeez, that's some of my favourite sound in the world. Welcome to the Byron Bay hinterland. You're with the regeneration, exploring human scale, living for the benefit of all. This is Human Scale Media. There was a beautiful story from Esther Park, who's in California.
Speaker 1:
And supporting, you know, regen farming and putting the finance there, and she's almost found the more sort of traditional KPIs that folks in her sector and sort of doing investment would have to be bound by and she found she could only do what she needed to do by parking those and putting them aside. And she told an amazing story about trusting her gut and learning that confidence. Again, to come back to the fact that there are folks who are doing this improving that it's possible, improving that it works.
Speaker 17:
So if conventional finance is really measured by things like risk, return, impact metrics, scale and efficiency, you know we've said, okay, let's set aside those things and what are the things that we can relate to as a land steward might? And so in our investing we are really going for things like beauty, complexity, relationships, the primacy of people, Indigenous wisdom and what we call original ways of knowing, and those things are very different frames for investing, but we think that they are actually required to be able to meet what we're trying to do on the land.
Speaker 18:
We're a genius species. We are really, really an exceptional, impressive bit of gear and we've done incredible, amazing things. And I'm not ashamed to be a human I'm not a self-hating human in that sense but you just have to have enough humility to realise that all the best parts about the world is the stuff that we can't make.
Speaker 19:
You've seen this place, Anthony. You've seen the density, diversity of life here in this valley as a result of our farming practices and if you want to support farms like ours, to support other farmers like ours and to support other farmers like ours, you know that's a multiplication effect. If you want to support that, then make those choices with your dollars.
Speaker 3:
You're, with the regeneration, exploring how people are shifting to what Carol Sanford calls the regenerate life paradigm, beyond business as usual and doing less harm and even just doing good. It's independent media, free of ads and freely available, thanks to the support of listeners like you.
Speaker 2:
I do love frogs. I would like to be a wombat, I just don't think my ass will ever get that hard you could work on it squats.
Speaker 21:
I was thinking more cowbell, more frog croaks, Frog croaks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, to ring that in More frog croaks.
Speaker 2:
I know that is my dream to have an ass, but after many, many hours of crossfit, it just never happened.
Speaker 21:
It's hard.
Speaker 1:
I don't know if you ever touched it.
Speaker 21:
It's small holds up no pants. Well, that's one of the least things we could complain about.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so I've just been doing soundcheck and you're sounding really good.
Speaker 14:
We sound amazing.
Speaker 3:
Remember, we'll just have to pick it up from there.
Speaker 21:
Excellent, we're wrong Armadbutts.
Speaker 3:
Now there's a title for a podcast. G'day, I'm Anthony James, coming to you from the Ningaloo Coast, featured in episode 162.
Speaker 5:
Thanks a lot.
Speaker 17:
My pleasure. Thank you Always. Thank you for having a country full of wombats. It's amazing. I'm out.
Speaker 3:
Dave Murphy from Farmers' Footprint Australia. You're the first cab off the rank on this beautiful sunny morning near Orange.
Speaker 15:
I'm wondering how you're coming out of this there is definitely a renewed sense of optimism for me, and that's come from just the people that are here and the relationships I think that I've been able to establish, and even in the short time that I've been here, just the welcoming community that is this group of regenerative farmers from all around the country, and hearing the stories of all the amazing things they're all doing in their own spaces in their own country, and just the momentum that they have and the belief that they have. It's quite contagious, and so I'm coming away with a real renewed sense of optimism and even seeing some of the diversity of not only farming operations, but just that there's kids here and there's young people here, and there's the multi-generational perspectives in the room and it's really quite uplifting.
Speaker 23:
I feel like what's happened here is much clearer and over a larger area than what we've seen. I see no reason why, you know, william couldn't become the new sort of wolves in Yellowstone. Anyway, that's what I, that's my dream.
Speaker 3:
Okay, so keep in mind that that slurp was loud in my ears.
Speaker 24:
Yeah, I was thinking about how we're going to do it.
Speaker 8:
Actually, in just out of Coffs Harbour, there's a just recently formed, within the last year or two is the Myanmar Agricultural Cooperative, which are Burmese refugees that have come over and they wanted to get back on the land. So they've found some land and they're I think there's about 10 families that are farming together on this land and they came out here. We invited them out when I heard what was going on and apparently on the car ride out, they all came in a little minivan.
Speaker 8:
Some of them were like crying and saying, oh, this is just like home and it was really emotional for them. So they're just sort of getting up and going. But you know, hopefully we see more of that because there is so much skill and knowledge there.
Speaker 26:
We're so crushed by the stories of destruction and mechanization and industrialization and we, you know, I just wanted to see it where it was living again, where it was, where it was in sync with something that was right, that was in sync with us, where we could be part of nature without it being woo-woo part of nature. We actually could see it. This is another way to go. Let's take a turn from Borgland and the Green Revolution and start going the biological way, not the chemical way. And why wouldn't that work? And God, there's just so many examples of how it is working.
Speaker 24:
Even from when I was working in amongst the coal mines and it was just in the heart of Aliette. Just a gut feeling like this isn't right. You know there's got to be something. You know, wow, what's the future in this? Yeah, it was a decent money and there was some job satisfaction there and you know you could still take pride in your work, but it didn't feel right, not like this, does you know? This feels right and there's a future in it.
Speaker 22:
That was the world that I grew up in. I was on sets for as long as I can remember. In the makeup trailer. You know sitting next to the director watching Dad and Mum on you know do their thing. Growing up watching Dad on the TV in our room while he's sitting next to me and him being shot to death, or you know his brain's blown out. You know China compute that. As a young, you know all those like that he always make you watch his movies.
Speaker 27:
And I asked Amanda if there was a secret ingredient that sits behind it. And what she told me has just echoed in my head forever since, and she just said simply don't ask people to pick a side.
Speaker 25:
I asked Amanda if there was a secret ingredient that sits behind it, and what she told me has just echoed in my head forever since. And she just said simply don't ask people to pick a side.
Speaker 28:
One of the things that he said to me is that you know you do the work, the doors will open. You know you're doing news now, but he's like well, we'll be doing news TV soon. I think too, when you speak life or you speak vision, it's a powerful tool to bring it to pass, and that's how I roll.
Speaker 20:
There are a few different new streams. Kana le le waganga le guru. Early in the morning. When the sun rises, everything the light touches in the land comes to life. We call that one the sunrise song.
Speaker 3:
G'day Anthony James, here for the regeneration from Irramagadu Roeburn. In fact, up the hill at the lookout, with the extraordinary public art installations here denoting the different countries around here, I'm at the foot of Indibandiman.
Speaker 20:
And it was a reckoning for them to be able to. You know, in a small space of the private ceremony that we did before the actual event, they got to heal that country but also healing themselves by being on country, you know, a sense of freedom in that speaks for itself.
Speaker 30:
So that's why this is so important. We are entering into an uncertain future where all of the, the stabilities, the certainties of life life, the economic certainty, the health certainty that was threatened during COVID, the weather certainty, the financial is all under threat. But we happen to have these. There's a word called krana, fertile in Irish, which means the stout oars, the oars that keep you rooted through difficult times. We have that in so many indigenous and old and traditional cultures and heritage in this land. And it's not too late. That's the real beauty. It's still alive in Ireland, it's still alive in Australia. So much has been lost, but it is there. If we turn to it now, respect it and give the time and respect and awe to those elders who have somehow managed to keep it alive.
Speaker 3:
G'day Anthony James, here for the regeneration back in Derby in the spectacular Kimberley region in the far northwest of WA.
Speaker 2:
Kids are getting up to mischief after the time because they're starving and it's making them crazy. If they're getting good food, they won't be crazy.
Speaker 3:
I was thinking who am I to talk over that? But then I wondered when they'd stop. The music you're hearing is New York Skyline by Brendan E Pryle. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 31:
Given that it's impossible. If it were possible, what would you do? Because that takes the pressure off. If you say yeah, yeah, yeah, it's impossible, but if it were possible, what would you do? Once you start coming up with possibilities, you're on the path.
Speaker 11:
I'm overwhelmed by everything the sun and the rain, the cars and the trees, the shores and the waves Beautiful hypocrisy. The towers and the trees, the birds and the breeze, the concrete and the trees, the birds and the breeze, the concrete and the sea. It's hard to see the light under the New York skyline.
Speaker 32:
There's ways of things working together in parallel, not doing the assimilation thing. How rich if you've got all these different lines, all these different cultures or ideals, that you can just enrich, so many different things, the fabric and things that you could weave oh my God, it would be amazing.
Speaker 11:
And there's no way out. Overwhelmed by everything the sun and the rain, the cars and the trees, the shores and the waves it's hard to see the light under the New York skyline.
Speaker 32:
Bloody forgot about the song at the end. Yeah, I forgot about that. Oh damn it.
Speaker 33:
You can grab the feeling when you're coming to everything else. Many came to me and we had that feeling. This is my. This is a story from my father about the morongod now, when I was telling about the little people taking on this pretty journey and about the two places I would live.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, Jesus, I was feeling that. Jimmy, it's been an absolute privilege speaking to you. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me on Country.
Speaker 33:
Thank you for that. Yeah, I like the old Slim Dusty, you do. Yeah, yeah, country Westerner.
Speaker 3:
If you were to pick your favourite song of Slim Dusty, which one would it be?
Speaker 33:
The Old Woosmeid of Mine. You know that one yeah. There's a far distant valley with another sun bright.
Speaker 3:
So good, yeah, of course I've been featuring what I've been hearing from Aboriginal people around WA in recent episodes, but come last weekend I had a growing feeling that the sort of conversations I'd been having weren't being reported or heard much the ones that are far from straightforward, that speak to lived realities, urgent needs, great successes and even greater opportunities, ones that are depolarising, respectful and open, and ones that aren't trying to convince anyone to vote a particular way. Having just got back to Perth, I had no idea what Heidi was thinking about the referendum. There was no predetermined agenda.
Speaker 21:
I feel like I haven't been able to have honest conversations around this topic, and most people I mean, I feel like anyone who knows me knows that I'm a very honest person and pretty transparent about what I think and how I feel. Oh damn, I can feel myself already getting emotional, and this is the thing, is this issue has really got me so emotional at the moment.
Speaker 3:
I was reading something Frank wrote about a decade or so ago that I hadn't seen. He referred to a book called Meta Magical Themis. I hadn't heard of it, thought it looked interesting, but thought nothing more of it Later. That day I was eating dinner at the place where Marianne Frank, myself and a couple of other friends had dined. The night he went into hospital for what was to be the last time. Walking home afterwards I passed the Grub Street bookshop. And what book should be in the window? Meta Magical Themis. Indeed.
Speaker 35:
As long as the sun shines and water drops out of the sky each year, there's absolutely no reason at all to chuck in the towel. I think we've only scratched the surface of what's possible, and I am still very, very optimistic. They co-operate with humans at some stage to the extent that, over millennia, the wild ancestors are no longer there. At what point in time do they lose biodiversity value? Why should something lose its biodiversity value simply because it cooperates with humans? But isn't that what we've done? Everything that cooperates with us, we cancel its biodiversity value and if we can't make money from it, we kill it.
Speaker 32:
There is so much value in them. There is more value in putting the time and effort into thinking of some solutions rather than having them dead and used for dog bait.
Speaker 36:
It's also a visibility thing, the number of bloody politicians that tell us that we're a tokenistic tin pot kind of emerging market. Well, actually, let's have a really good hard look at who we are and what we're doing. When you actually look at us all in one place and we're visible, we are actually more than a movement. We're a new paradigm of operation, and it's about making it visible.
Speaker 26:
This company, you guys, I mean this tribe has so fortified me and made me feel like God. If we can get this out there, if we can do what we do on a large scale and amp this up, we are going to be okay.
Speaker 3:
Hey, don't leak my computer. Good day, anthony James. Here You're with the Regeneration sharing the stories that are changing, the story Coming to you today from the Massey Farm en route to the ReConnection Festival this weekend.
Speaker 16:
But for it to be picked up at the European Union level is massive because obviously the European Union has the capacity to influence the ongoing legislative regimes of all the countries that form part of it and then of all the countries that engage economically with it. So the introduction of Ecoside at the European level is massive.
Speaker 37:
I felt like I had this force field around me and it radiated power and influence and I honestly feel like it was the most powerful thing I ever did, much more powerful than being an ambassador for Australia or a ministerial advisor, or the threat and species, commissioner.
Speaker 38:
But I think part of that movement. What I'm challenging people if you think you're doing regenerative and your neighbor is not doing what you're doing, you're failing. You're not doing regenerative. Regenerative is about the world changing, not about me changing my little place.
Speaker 20:
But we maybe picture this. We've been here for the day when the sun rose. We come and talk and share yarn with one another, and now we come to close in the evening, when the sun goes down and all the trees blacken to a shadow, we sing this one there called Darurula. In the west, when the setting sun glows red, we see the trees blacken into a shadow.
Speaker 5:
We sing this one there called Darurula. We sing this one there called Darurula.