The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
235. The 2024 RegenNarration Soundtrack: Highlights from our guests & their places
Welcome to the customary package of highlights from another brilliant array of guests throughout 2024, accompanied by some of the music and sounds of Country heard along the way – this time across two continents, 49 episodes and 78 guests, from all walks of life. Listening to it all together in one place last night was just incredible. I hope you enjoy it too.
You’ll hear a little from me first, with a short summary of the year in review, along with a snapshot of where we are right now, some intent for next year, and an update on the Kachana hearing just concluded.
With enormous thanks to subscribers and other supporting listeners for making all this possible. And to everyone who sheltered, fed and generally cared for us throughout the year, around Australia and the States.
With enormous thanks also, to all the wonderful musicians who generously granted permission for their music to be heard here. And of course, to you, thanks for listening.
The track list for this episode, identifying the music and people, is found in the chapter markers. A transcript is also available (on most apps now too). The transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully provides greater access for those who need or like to read.
Title image: AJ in a personal highlight visit to Joshua Tree National Park (pic: Olivia Cheng).
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To access the full catalogue of episodes, head to the website at https://www.regennarration.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening, have a wonderful festive season and see you again in 2025!
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G'day everyone. Anthony James, here one last time this year for he Regeneration, your independent, listener-supported portal into the dawning regenerative era. Welcome to the customary package of highlights from another brilliant array of guests on the podcast throughout 2024, accompanied by some of the music and sounds of country heard along the way. The sounds of country you hear now are from San Juan La Laguna, by El Lago de Atitlan, deep in the heart of volcanic Mayan lands in modern day Guatemala. So, yeah, you're going to hear motorbikes, construction sites, tuk-tuks, potentially fireworks which don't have much fire, they're mostly noise works and other assorted paraphernalia, as well as potentially, a howling wind, which is why I'm not outside by the lake itself giving you the sound of water. But you can imagine that I can see it from where I sit. It is arguably the most spectacular lake in the world and home I'm learning to a growing number of regenerative, cultural, agricultural, ecological and economical efforts. Make no mistake, they're desperately needed here too, but they are here. I'll report more on that next year, but one of those thriving efforts long-term listeners might remember is El Instituto Mesoamericano de Permacultura, imap, the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute, just a couple of coves east of here. That featured in episode 113, transformations with Mayan Culture and Permaculture. That featured Maria Ines Cuj and Rony Lec. There's a Spanish version back in the feed too if you'd like to hear or revisit that, with some bonus off the record stuff on that one. But back onto this year's guests. Once again they were from all walks First Nations and farmers, ranchers and researchers, scientists and soil specialists, group facilitators, entrepreneurs and energy transition specialists, butchers and politicians. Don't know why I grouped those together, especially because those featured here are of the new community sourced breed Filmmakers and festival founders, writers and artists, musicians and media pros, philanthropists and investors, designers, doctors and theatre directors. And that was even before we left Australia back in April.
AJ:The next seven months were spent touring the USA Turtle Island across 26 states, again with people of all types. In addition to those I've just mentioned. They included ecologists and agroecologists, community organizers and cosmic engagement officers well, one of those, episode 207, regenerative financiers and radio producers, psychedelic savants, several genuine legends and next generations, some old friends and many new ones. Some previously virtual friends now IRL ones, so much better. Some famous, many, not Some magicians well, at least they can appear to be Horse people, cow people, buffalo people, donkey people, plants people, sometimes all at once, and so much in between internet and other technological pioneers, policy makers, publishers and educators, and, from way back home, the new Australians of the year for Western Australia. You're about to hear a snippet from them all, essentially the quotes I place at the start of each episode, amidst the tunes and places heard this year and wow, listening to it all together in one place last night was just incredible. I hope you enjoy it too.
AJ:There were 49 episodes this year, equal most with last year featuring 78 guests the most of any year so far and mostly in person. There were mostly men this year too, but mostly women last year. This year of gender reckoning needed to hear more from the conscientious blokes. I think, though, that wasn't the reason it panned out this way here. Eight of my guests were First Nations, 12 more were of colour, 23 were young folk, which I broadly peg as under 40ish young to me anyway. 38 of the 49 episodes were conversations, with 5 panels 1, one monologue on arrival in the US, two compilations, two mail runs replying to your text messages and this highlight reel.
AJ:And when it started to snow, well, it was time for these West Aussie Sand Gropers to head south, where Guatemala beckoned my home for a few years, 20 plus years ago. So, as you can imagine, it feels pretty special getting reacquainted and with the family in tow. So we're going to take some time to really soak this in over the next weeks before the podcast returns in the new year. For now, I hope you've enjoyed the podcast this year as much as I have in producing it for you, for none of it would be possible without you.
AJ:A special thanks this week to Paul Hawken, Dominique Hess, Impact Seed, Cargill and Chris Dowling for your three years of support now, and to the rest of my Foundation subscribers from back in the very beginning of Patreon three years and three months ago Fiona, amy Rankin, sharon Clifford, todd Delfs, josie Symons, ben Symons, caitlin Tacey, grace Rose Miller, alessandro Pellizzon, craig Wilson and Caz. And as another year ends, huge thanks to all you generous subscribers. I'll continue my little shoutouts and other bonus bits next year. Of course, if you're not yet part of this great community of supporting listeners, there's still time. I'd love you to join us for next year with some new developments in tow. You'll find links in the show notes.
AJ:With my great gratitude, I also want to thank you for your wonderful correspondence this year. Thanks, too, to subscriber, bec Hamersley, for minding The RegenNarration- mobile back home, and to everyone who sheltered, fed and generally cared for us throughout the year around Australia and the States. Also, huge thanks to the wonderful musicians who generously granted permission for their music to be heard here and finally to you. Thanks so much for listening. This still feels like an honour project. I'm honoured that my guests grant me their time and wisdom and that you do too. So we'll be back in a few weeks for the ninth year of the podcast gulp, with a few more surprises too. There's still much to do, inspiration to leverage and joy to be had, and I'm glad to be doing it with you.
AJ:Oh, one last thing for those wondering about the final, final decision of the state tribunal on the donkeys at Kachana station from episode 230,. The decision was reserved. I don't really know what that means yet, except that the donkeys are alive and kicking at Kachana. More on that next year too. And geez, I hope that hammering hasn't done your head in throughout this. Anyway, oh, I forgot about the dogs barking. You might've caught that Plenty of that too. Okay, right now, enjoy the sweep through 2024. Have a wonderful festive season and I look forward to seeing you in 2025.
AJ:G'day. My name's Anthony James. Welcome to 2024, the eighth year of the regeneration. Hard to believe, really, as an entirely listener-supported podcast without ads or paywalls. It's all thanks to listeners like you.
Terry McCosker:If you look at the bill, the flood repair bills in Australia just take the flood and fire repair bills in Australia not just in WA but Australia You're looking at tens of billions, you know maybe hundreds of billions, and to fix the landscape is a fraction of that and change a lot of those outcomes.
Rowan Reid:I have learned I think it was said earlier in Gabe's presentation in some sense it's easier for the next generation and they've got the resource base to build on. So I sort of feel like they're going to catapult forward and we're going to see much more rapid change as a result of these examples. It's certainly going to happen with trees, because it takes so long to grow, but imagine what it's like in all these other examples where people have got those markets established and the infrastructure and the links and the equipment and the knowledge and then suddenly it should just take off.
Amanda Cahill:And the really crunchy crisis points I keep thinking of five, maybe ten years away are here now, and how quickly the response at one end of the extreme is to leap onto solutions that actually strengthen the systems that created the problem in the first place.
Laura Dalrymple:Well, the first thing I'd say is it's incredibly heartening to even be at an event like this, like when we started about 17 years ago. Something like this was completely I mean. Nobody would even have considered doing something like this was completely I mean nobody would even have considered doing something like this.
Matthew Evans:And doing it through food actually at a table, because everybody, lots of people, don't want to be at a boring talk fest like this, right, you know, like it's not their bag, right. DARREN DOHERTY: You're doing great Anthony. MATTHEW: I mean, this isn't boring, but some of them are. AJ: you can't unhear what you've heard Matthew.
Di Haggerty:That's what we'd love most of is to have a new family or families come into the area, because that's what the country's lacking a lot of is people in those regional areas and people with a fire in their belly and a bit of passion to go and put their own stamp on something.
Ian Haggerty:It's the perfect opportunity for us to actually put that out there and let someone else possibly have the start that we did on that property. That property was the foundation from what we've grown into and we thought, well, wouldn't it be good, rather than us continuing to run it from up there, to actually open up that opportunity for someone else?
Kate McBride:What's actually kind of even more crazy is that when the river is sick, crime rate increases and life expectancy decreases. And I remember the first time I saw that and I was like what? I just didn't get it. I wasn't connected to community and I wasn't connected to First Nations people really at all. And the more I got involved and taken out on country and like explained this to an Uncle, badger Bates, who's been a massive mentor to me and I remember him saying that like the river is like our mother and when she's sick we're sick and you you know the river's like the blood that runs through our vein and like this really powerful language. But it's like it's so clear you can see in the town when the river is sick that the community goes downhill.
Dr Pran Yoganathan:You know, if you're an empathetic individual which I'd like to think we all are in this room and that's why we've been brought together under the same roof you can't help but feel absolute um to, to feel distraught at at the amount of illness that we see, and in in youth, in young people as well. You know people that should be able to go through this life and navigate this life with an able body. They're not able to do so, and when I looked within my field, I turned to professors and highly esteemed clinicians within my field. The answers that I got really didn't fit. The further I've dug into the root cause, I've just ended up in soil.
Zach Bush MD:That's our opportunity in this room. Is you all landed here? And there's a tendency for us to look out in the world and then pat ourselves on the back of being like well, at least these 800 people have figured out a little bit of truth, or we're seeing the patterns more accurately than the rest. The danger is that we settle in and think that we've done our work.
Kate McBride:So some of you might know, yeah, griffith out in New South Wales is seven times the national average of motor neurone disease and sort of people are saying, oh, we don't really know why. But it's interesting how locals and people you know that live in the area and have motor neurone disease recognise that something's gone wrong with our water.
John Feldman:The film in some respects is a series of you know, gee whiz moments, of moments when you say oh my God, I never thought about that. And the whole point is to start looking at the same old stuff in a new way. And once you start to look at things in a new way, everything else can start to fall into place.
Tim Fisher:The average Australian house is 1.5 stars on the energy efficiency rating. And how many stars?
AJ:are we talking these? Days. Well, I think we're up to 11 or something.
Tim Fisher:Yeah, that's right. And for new homes, the minimum is now seven stars in most states. Yeah, there you go. Yet the average Australian house is 1.5 stars, crikey.
Dominique Hes:and so not one of my students, but I heard of a young 19-year-old engineering student committing suicide because he'd gotten into the whole peak oil thing, and he got so depressed that he saw no hope. And I became so and I just had my daughter. So I had this three month old bundle of potential in my arms and to think of that potential.
Dominique Hes:Giving up at 19, I was like no swear word. Uh no, there is. There's so much good stuff. There's so much potential in humanity. There's so much potential in humanity. There's so much we can do if we're in right relationship with place.
Zach Bush MD:But I did just meet him right where he was at. I was like of course you feel that way, because if I had heard myself speak right now, 15 years ago, I would have walked right out of the room.
Zach Bush MD:I wouldn't give myself three minutes of airtime in my brain 15 years ago Because I'm seeing the world so radically different than I did then. And that doesn't mean I'm 15 years ahead of him or something like that. It just means that we are capable of transformational understanding of the systems we live in when we start to open up the doors. And I believe he could be innovating on a farm in five years because he was there at an event called Grounds how do you feel would you pick up the guitar?
Zach Bush MD:for sure, that'd be one try if you tolerate that it's. It's a funny thing. Maybe I'll do this. Willie Nelson has a great quote that if you play more than two chords and you're just showing off, so at risk of showing off, I will limit myself for two chords to show you. Oh, there we go. So this is one chord and it's an E major here. And the way in which my brain is able to coordinate a few fingers across the strings, it can create little mini harmonies and patterns and rhythms within that single chord. This is an A minor.
Zach Bush MD:That's your E minor. I'm sorry, that's your E major, E major into your A minor. I am playing small pieces of a tree major into your A minor. I am playing small pieces of a tree strung with strings of minerals to create this sound and it just blows my mind.
Zach Bush MD:If you haven't seen a luthier or guitar maker do their work, it's almost a must in life. It will change your perspective on a lot of things. When you watch a luthier do their work, it's exquisite watching them build a guitar or a violin or whatever they've got their hand to. It's such an exquisitely delicate art form. The thinness of these pieces of wood is extraordinary and my guitars have been with me the guitars I play on most of all at home have been with me for 30 years now and that they can weather all the changes in the weather. The changes in my state of Virginia are extreme. We go from dry to extreme humidity levels. We have 100-degree temperature swings, Like it's so dramatic. And yet my guitars just sit there in these thin little expressions of tree waiting to be played.
Zach Bush MD:And one phenomenon that you find with a guitar that I find really fascinating is that it changes its tone in the first hour or so that you're playing it when you first pick up this guitar. I picked this up first two days ago and it hadn't been played in quite some time. You could tell dust on it and everything else and it sounded really tinny. It was lacking any kind of mid-range to it because the wood had become brittle, because it hadn't vibrated. But as soon as I picked it up and gave it kind of 10 or 15 minutes of love and let that vibrate in my lap, stroking the strings for a little bit and forcing that wood back into its memory of motion, it just woke right up and now it's got this bell-like quality within the middle. And these are old strings and old strings don't do their best work, and yet it's just so warm and lovely to feel it.
Zach Bush MD:And all I'm doing is playing two chords to honor Willie Nelson and his simplicity of understanding. Beauty is not complex. Beauty is in its essence. And now I want you to close your eyes and, just like, experience those tones. There's so much opportunity, so much potential, so much love in the air, so much opportunity to recapture what we know is true and re-express ourselves. And so I'm here to honor you and hope that you are inspired through a long conversation today about the beauty of the world and the nature of food itself, the nature of farmers and their resilience and their desire to feed the community around them. And you are that community and you are being fed by some farmer somewhere, and so I encourage you to go find that person in the field and reconnect.
Jim Phillipson:So in one decade, two decades, five decades, you're not here, you're no longer. You have agency today. You have agency to set the course of that environment, of that property, of your children, of their children, of the whole next generations. You have the agency today. You don't have the agency when you die. And that is such a powerful thing to be able to enact that agency that literally it's transformative with an individual's psychology. They have a real purpose and a real engagement and they literally come alive and they have a much more enriched life. So it's not letting go, it's about embracing in a far greater way.
Sam Vincent:Yeah, I think it is the highlight of my farming career so far and I think a lot of farmers. They realise at one level that we're on the same page. We want to care for the country. Farmers and traditional owners are often perceived to be enemies because of this history of frontier violence and dispossession, which is all true, but at the same time, farmers want to do what's right by their land and traditional owners do as well, and I think there's a great opportunity for collaborative projects like this one we've engaged in.
Nicole Curato:All of these seemingly mundane, small decisions were subject to community deliberation by people who literally had nothing, and I thought, if people who literally had nothing were able to come together, spend time together and deliberate together and make decisions on matters that directly affect their lives, then there is no reason why other contexts can't do the same, and to me, that is really the best example of deliberative democracy in action Communities coming together, taking charge of their lives and getting the outcome they want. So today they actually live in the city with climate resilient homes, with paint that they chose themselves, with street names that they chose themselves, and there's really interesting ownership in that process. And yeah, and I think that's something that we should celebrate- Turned the place into an absolute desert.
David Marsh:You know, there was no vegetation on a lot of our paddocks and I felt so ashamed of that Because I really had to admit to myself that I was the cause of it. It wasn't just something that came along with dry weather, because there was plenty of grass on the side of the road. I had to admit that I was the bloke responsible. That was a major turning point. I went on this odyssey. I vowed to myself that I would never let that happen again. I went on this odyssey of trying to find other ways of doing things that wouldn't make you feel like you were trapped all the time.
Lamine Sonko:The slave trade story sometimes overshadows all this other amazing discovery or creation of what African people have created or contributed to the world, even though, we have to acknowledge it, it's there, you know. But I think understanding that there was the old and new you know can create a new narrative, is very important and I think me, through my work that's how I try to blend things is to know the history, you know, but also go back in time to try and find why we are here as humans, depending on wherever you come from. But what is the purpose of life?
Simon Edwards:It was a complete life shift for me, I think as a musician, and I think my eyes have opened up to the power of human connections in a way that I hadn't been privy to before Music.
Kate Chaney MP:One of the real challenges I find in this job is, at some point you have to break down the big picture into things that you can actually take on. Yes and so, while I absolutely think that we have a problem with endless growth, you know that it doesn't work. We have a problem with endless growth. You know that it doesn't work. We have a problem with induced demand. Trying to turn that into realistic actions we can take on the issues that are in front of us today I find quite challenging, you know, because it also needs to be driven by a change in desires. I don't think it can be externally imposed by government.
AJ:Would something come to mind to take us out?
Lamine Sonko:Because in our conversation Simon talked about my cousin giving me a song line. So it's my duty to actually play it for whoever may listen to this podcast in future. So they know that I've done it in the traditional and respectful way. Actually play it for whoever may listen to this podcast in future. So they know that I've done it in the traditional and respectful way. So I come from the Seng Seng family and it's mandatory that whenever you mention that family you have to also play the rhythm to pay respect. So I'm going to play that rhythm. That's one.
Lamine Sonko:And the second rhythm is called Yani Mom. Yani Mom is a rhythm. We start with everything we do and we end with everything we do. So I'm gonna start with the song line of the Seng Seng family and it sounds like this Tabaran tambak pin pin tan, tambak pin pin, tabaran tambak pin pin tan, and that says so Yani Mom is a rhythm that say we give thanks and gratitude for life and all the energies that help us as a collective. So Yani Mom goes like this Wrenkin ten, tenkin, wrenkin ten, kidda, kidda, kidda, dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadad. Thank you.
AJ:G'day friends, Anthony James, here for The RegenNarration - and now for something completely different. I've been promising some big news for a little while now. Well, you might be able to hear the conspicuous sounds of an airport in the background, though it is quite quiet at the moment. The news is that my family and I have just arrived in the Americas, specifically in North America, turtle Island, and more specific than that, in San Francisco, where we're just about to be picked up by the most popular guest on the podcast, as it happens, and dear friend now, paul Hawken.
Paul Hawken:We have these really strange phrases a net zero, net of what, and what it means is that there's no more carbon going up than there is coming down. You know it's like good luck on measuring that one. You know you can't measure, and that's what I was trying to say. Carbon is a flow and it's inextricably bound with all other aspects of life, and that's immeasurable. Net zero is immeasurable, that's just immeasurable.
Richard Heinberg:You can go around the world right now and find societies that are using energy at half the per capita rate of North Americans, and some of those are in Europe. And these people are not living in caves, right. They're living in beautiful cities that have you know existed for centuries, and they have art museums and symphony orchestras and everything. And you can even find societies that use energy at half the per capita rate of Europe and are still doing quite well.
Esther Park:I said we adamantly, categorically, do not track any impact metrics, and somebody in one of our groups just went oh my gosh, I don't have to do that. And I feel like the mainstream system is always telling us these are the ways that we do things and these are the ways that they should be done. These are the ways that we do things and these are the ways that they should be done. These are the ways that things have always been done, and so we believe that that's how we should be doing things, and in in some cases, we've observed that simply giving people permission to think differently is all they really need to like take that next step right. So it's like oh wait, I don't have to get a market rate return. Oh wait, I don't have to worry about impact metrics we're actually, um, in the process.
David Bronner:You know, I guess maybe it'd be the first public's talking about it, but, um, uh, we're helping develop what we're calling the Purpose Pledge and it's basically taking some 10 core criteria that really distinguish what we consider to be a real mission, ethical business and really getting at the heart of your operations, like your supply chain integrity. You know eco-social certification of your supply chain, where most of your impact is. You know, as cool as what we do here in our headquarters in our factory. This is like 5% of our impact. I mean, it's all the farmers and workers in our supply chain. You know what's our sourcing practice. That's really just 10 key criteria. And, yeah, you know there's some really good businesses out there and we wanna just really kind of create a home for the Patagonias and Bronners of the world and you know, like just really dedicated through and through and have that mission, integrity and independence and then like create a financing, like an investment mechanism that will invest in these startups and in these companies and we'll be patient and isn't these kind of like pseudo impact?
Brock Dolman:and they went back before in the satellite imagery before the burn and found places that had beaver pre-burn and then looked at those same sites post-burn and where there was still beaver, and they found these incredible green oases of beaver habitats and beaver wetlands that didn't burn during the fire. It's black everywhere else around it, but the beaver water doesn't burn. And so these Smokey the Beaver showed up and in fact in Southern California they had a moment where they saw a bear. A black bear took refuge in beaver habitat.
David Bronner:So, Smokey the.
Brock Dolman:Beaver helped save Smokey the Bear.
Steve Mushin:That's something that was so important when I created Ultra Wild was that it had to be joyful, because we're all so burdened at least everyone I know is burdened by what we're all so burdened at least everyone I know is burdened by by what we're facing. And I, I think, in order to get ourselves out of this pickle, we need to have fun. We need to be joyful with ideas. We need to embrace joyful creative thinking on a massive scale. We need to ramp up creativity to the max.
Joyce Skeet:First thing that I had to do was to see myself as equal, and to do that, james used to tell me for a while he goes you need to talk to the plants, you need to listen to the plants, and me I'm like how the heck do I do that.
Joyce Skeet:But I didn't question him. It was as I began praying about it. And one day and this is probably after two years of praying I went down to a wild field of amaranth and I just sat there because I wanted to pick some of the amaranth seeds and I just began thanking them and appreciating them and this overwhelming gratitude from the plants just came on me. It just made me start crying and it just I don't know it was such a strong, strong feeling.
James Skeet:And it was then that I understood that coexistence. And that's where I think the sharing, the bartering, the exchange, all those are covenants that we have to remake and those covenants are broken right now. But you can mend those, you can complete the circle, you can adjust yourself to time in a different way. You can walk about, you can enter in this time in a different way. You can walk about, you can enter in this space of nomadicism that we were told to walk on the earth.
James Skeet:There's a river of life that's flowing from His throne. River of life that's flowing from His throne, won't you come on in and see?
James Skeet:This river will set you free Way-a-yo, way-a-yo, oh-way, way-a, way-a-yo, oh-way-o, way-a, way-a bring people into prayer time or ceremony.
AJ:Wow, does it what into prayer time or ceremony? Wow, does it work.
Jeff Goebel:That's been my journey for a long time, since I've realized that we don't have to live like we're living. We can have a better life. We can have government work very well. We can have people really satisfied and trusting their governments. We can have streams come back. We can have species not go extinct anymore. I mean all that can happen. We can have people be very profitable in agriculture.
Katie Stone:So I was at a public radio conference and the general manager of the NPR station that carries the children's hour found me at this public radio station conference and told me he had to talk to me because they'd gotten their ratings back and they couldn't believe it that Saturday at 7 am turns out to be trouncing other programming, including NPR programming, in their ratings. And he said none of us could believe it. None of us could believe it. None of us could believe it. And then he said but I go, I could believe it because I listen every week.
Amadeus Menendez:Like talking to astronauts is something that when I was reading about them in history books, I thought, well, hold on, they don't talk about farting in space. I want to know about that. And so from there I thought, well, maybe you know, I can get to ask about this type of stuff on the show, and getting to do that and then getting to share that information with other kids is such a special thing. And I see the impact of it, I see its positivity, I see how it's growing and I just see such a bright future for it. I mean, I'm really excited to see what's around the corner for it and I think a lot is.
Andrew Stone:I think that one of the things I think about the most the blessing that I've had is that I had that vision as a young person to put in my roots and begin building something. I had no idea what its final form was. I mean, that wouldn't have been fun for anyone. You know that's what's so great about improv, is you really don't know what you're going to say next. And it surprises you too.
Nina Simons:I began to be acknowledged for my leadership and I didn't like it. I felt like I wanted to deflect it. I didn't feel like I'd earned it and I felt like it somehow painted a target on my back that I didn't feel good about. Painted a target on my back that I didn't feel good about, and I knew from Bioneers, from all these luminaries that I'd been learning from over the years, that the earth is calling us all to be leaders in this time and I thought, well, what's wrong with this picture? You know, if I don't want to be called a leader, that's no good. If we all need to be leaders, how am I going to reconcile that?
Kenny Ausubel:In 1990, the first Bioneers conference, you could count the number of people in the of really leaders in the agricultural field on two hands, probably on one hand. Frankly, Now we can't even keep up. No, I mean, we have a whole team of people, we have a hard team keeping up. So there's a huge proliferation of all this work. It's much, much more widespread.
Cody Spencer:We've seen some of this stuff start to really go mainstream for real, like regenerative agriculture, and so after that moment I was completely blown away. It was a two-day workshop. I was so overwhelmed by the information that I heard in the first day that I'm embarrassed to say I didn't even go to the second day. I went up into the mountains, camped by myself, to try to reflect on what I had just heard and I didn't know what to make of it. But I knew I was going to be studying and practicing this for the rest of my life.
Allan Savory:I remember thinking there why am I in the army? Why am I fighting in a war? Why am I doing all these things for politicians? I don't believe in policies. I don't believe in all these things for politicians. I don't believe in policies. I don't believe in what am I prepared to do about this, the destruction of my country? ¶¶.
Cole Mannix:Thank you. I think a lot of people have the notion that if you could just get producers to adopt regenerative practices you'd see massive change and now customers could choose the better product. But I think that if tomorrow you could make every producer the top of their craft just by fiat, they would be selling into an extractive food system that would ultimately bankrupt the soil. So you really have to build a food system whose intention starts out from the beginning at producing a nourishing product and taking care of soil and water and biodiversity for the long term. You know smokers, drinkers, folks that may have had not some of the cleanest living and yet lived long, good lives with a sense of connection and a sense of being part of something.
Cole Mannix:So he was talking about, first of all. I almost think back to the holding loosely. We talked about holding private property loosely, but holding loosely our own notions of our own worldviews. Our own notions of our own world views, our own presupposition that we understand things very accurately or that the frame that we've created or the way we've made meaning out of the world is exactly right, and holding that a little more loosely and basically recognizing that we're pretty imperfect, we're pretty small compared to our ability to really digest it all and if we just sort of let go of our polarizations a little bit and recognize how much we have in common. He said. I believe we're put here to love, to learn how to love, and God, that makes me cry even saying that Especially with his music playing.
Katie Ross:Again, it makes me curious what has been his impact across the world and that power of one person's ability to communicate what it is that they believe in, and not necessarily trying to convince or to conjole, but to just share his words in the most beautiful, authentic way and then see how that lands with everyone else.
Pedro Calderon-Dominguez:And then one of them like I think that those were the last thing that he was saying was like like it's great the thing that you are doing with Buffalo, because, long story short, like bison to us is God.
Pedro Calderon-Dominguez:So back there you can see that old bull with all the yeah, right at the back. Yeah, so it's way different the, the shape of the hump and the shape of the wool that this young one so huge yeah, and this is the all. This group is the one from Yellowstone, so that's the one that we took in the quarantine for a while. So that's why they are used, just so used to be here close to us.
Pedro Calderon-Dominguez:Yeah, yeah. So let's see if we can get closer a little bit. And when you approach them this low stress bison handling deal you have to embrace your 90 year old man. So you want to walk like this, you walk like this. And even when I walk them in the corral, if I go walking like this, then it helps for them to not run. Okay, too close. So we go back, we go back, we close. So we go back, we go back, we go back, we go back, we go back. Okay, stop. Good day.
Kelsey Scott:My Lakota name is Soft Little Breeze Woman and my English name is Kelsey Scott centers that the Biden-Harris administration has established and charged with the responsibility of creating a successful model for regionalizing food systems. Gulp.
Eric Vinson:But what I like about the biodynamic farming if nothing else like even if these things can't be measured scientifically for efficacy, if else it, uh it creates a sense of ritual around the farm and for the farmers to come together and, um, you know, and offer something to the land and really, uh, help you think of this farm as like a living organism instead of just a plot of land and that's gaia.
Matthew Evans:if that's the case, if soil health can be tied to plant health, animal health, human health, brain health, planetary health, then is there a way for farmers to be paid for nutrient density? Because that's the question, and so this is for me, this is a topic that would interest nutritionists. It would influence people who are planning school. That would interest nutritionists. It would influence people who are planning school meals. It would, you know, it would be of interest to people who are interesting in farming systems generally or food systems generally. Yes, um, and yes, we're an event on farm by farmers, for farmers, but it's for farmers and their friends and their supporters, so people who are anywhere in that mix.
Matthew Evans:And so if you want to have the oat milk to make your coffee whiter or because you think you're saving the planet, that's fine, but it's not doing you any good, it's potentially doing you harm. If you're having dairy and you don't have any allergies or intolerances, it's probably doing you good, potentially doing you great good. So if you get rid of the dairy, you're going to have to add in a whole bunch of other things into your diet. You're going to have to be thinking a lot more about what goes in your standard western diet, get rid of dairy. Well, you're going to. You can't just get rid of dairy and replace it with a with a plant milk.
Chloe Maxmin:we've done three cohorts, we have um, we'll have over 70 alums from 29 states and we have 38 people running for office this year, just in our first year. So, and they're all such wonderful people too, just so kind and grounded and lovely and just like, so aligned with everything you and I are talking about, about wanting to represent their communities and, you know, heal the divides and use their campaign as a way to just create a different story in their community.
Bill Pluecker:And so preserving that it's under assault. I feel like it's under assault and I think the people and you can get into the politics later but, like my community is quite conservative and so they feel under attack by values coming from other places. And so, like working with my conservative community, working to protect my conservative community, but at the same time say that there is a politics that will help you, that isn't far right and that's a big part of what I do and saying I'm a, you know I can be a progressive, but I can also be pro-farmer and helping us take care of our land and take care of our way of life. That's been this way for so long.
Joel Caldwell:And so we need to have hemp processing plants all over the place. We need to empower the local farmers. You know we need to be growing hemp, processing it and using it locally. That's the idea and that's what's really exciting. And so the first people in North America, sort of against all odds, the first people in North America who are growing their own hemp, processing it into usable fiber themselves and then using it to build homes for their own community, is the Lower Sioux Indian community on the plains of Minnesota.
Lucia Valentine:Well, even I think in our local races like talking to voters, you know I've had several folks share with me that they are voting for Trump. But they're also voting for me because at the local level they see they don't like how divisive the rhetoric is around my race and they see that I'm fighting for local issues and they want a voice in local issues. But then there's a sentiment at the federal level that they also feel unrepresented and, for whatever reason, they feel like Trump is who represents them best.
Lucia Valentine:But I don't think they feel like there is a distinct answer there you know, I think that's so interesting because we've always heard oh, it's hard for Democrats to raise money in West Virginia, especially in these times, and, like Lucia said, we're kind of breaking out of the cages that were set around that right. So we've been told these narratives, but we are doing it differently. I mean, people are really becoming part of the movement and they want to give to something they can believe in, and I feel like we are trying to stand for that, just in country roads yeah, okay.
Maria Russo:West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River. Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze. Country roads take me home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain mama. Take me home.
Douglas Rushkoff:it's a shame, but I'm starting to believe that the whole narrative of the internet is just bullshit. Yeah, and that even you know I've got so many friends who get so upset about the way Palestine's being portrayed or the way Israel's being portrayed, or the way climate is getting distorted, or the way a TV show distorts Kamala or apologizes for her or for Trump. It's like, on a certain, not to turn away from reality, but maybe turning away from that is turning to reality rather than away from it.
AJ:What a week here in the States an extraordinary time at the Regenerate Conference in Denver and, of course, an extraordinary federal election. More on both those fronts next week. Today, one of the most remarkable stories of regeneration on this podcast still the second most listened to episode featured in a landmark ABC TV special. Back home last week, one of Australia's best journalists, walkley Award winner Ben Cheshire, pulled together the story of Kachana Station in the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia for one of Australia's most loved, influential and long-running TV series Australian Story.
Chris Henggeler:We can work with Australia's new megafauna, the animals that we brought in for partial purposes, for riding for freight in their camels and donkeys, all the domesticated animals that are in australia could actually help us to actually go out there and start rehydrating our landscapes. ANICA WONG: yeah, I mean, I think that there is so much these days that can feel really targeted toward groups of people who are underserved and who are on the margins, and I think that that is you can't deny that, there is no denial of that and it can feel heavy. These days have had heavy feelings to them. Heavy these days have had heavy feelings to them. I feel like especially, you know, colorado is known for having, however, you know, 350 days of sun, and this conference has had maybe five to ten minutes of sun, and that is very unusual in Colorado. Usually it's gonna snow, snow and then the sun is going to come out.
Shumaisa Khan:We're all monsters in some way and to demonize. Well, how did that person or group or groups vote in this way or didn't vote or whatever? But you know we did it this way because in our paradigm or value system, x is like less of a priority and you know, this is more of a priority and it's just like that's real and also what other people are thinking and their worldview is also real and just the materiality of, like the basics of people and just the materiality of like the basics of people, what they need to survive, and also like live with dignity.
Harley Dixon:Like that, I think, is something to come back to. I think that most people are thinking about things in terms that somebody is going to lose, and when we come to the table, I think that everybody's going to win. You know there is, if you are looking at this from a purely fiscal, conservative perspective, there is an opportunity to reduce the cost for the farmer at every step of the way, reduce the involvement of government at every step of the way, and that this is just an opportunity space. At the same time, if you're looking at it from an agroecological or even environmental perspective, you can see this as a huge opportunity to sequester carbon. There are any number of reasons why this works in an environmental perspective, and so you really have both sides of this divide that are really meeting in this place where everybody wins.
Aria McLauchlan:I mean it is a little bit of a trope, but I think there's a lot of truth in that. Soil is our common ground and you know, I think you see it play out every day across the landscape in Australia and it is true across. You know this incredible diversity of landscapes and production types and, frankly, you know political beliefs. You know I have incredible friendships with farmers and ranchers and even just different organizations where you know our personal lives and our politics are probably quite a bit different but we are able to come together and so that's yeah, it's really saying, it's really it's fortunate and there is something there.
Emma Ractcliffe:And a desire to come together, you know, and this divisiveness. So yeah, I think that I was always very surprised by how different it was from what you would think it was in the media.
Chloe Maxmin:The only thing that breaks through the capture of our media on either side is a face to face conversation. Whether that's you're, you're watching CNN all the time and then shocked that Trump won and you haven't talked to a Trump voter, or if it's you're watching Fox News all the time and a Democrat hasn't knocked on your door in a decade. So I think on either side it requires a showing up.
Carol Sanford:And 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 figure out how to help people shift paradigm.
AJ:A few weeks ago I released a special podcast marking the premiere of an episode of Australian Story, the influential ABC TV show back home. That featured the incredible story of regeneration at the hands of the Henggeler family at Kachana Station. Many of you already know the story from its popularity on this podcast. Well, that Australian story has gone on to well over half a million views already. and no sooner had it gone out that I got the news that fellow legendary regenerative farmers from Western Australia, Diane and Ian Haggerty, had been awarded the 2025 Australians of the Year for WA.
Di Haggerty:It's exactly what we try and take away. Is that human control over these natural systems? Realistically, we know very, very little about how natural systems truly function. We don't really need to know it all. All we've got to do is just try and do our best to enable that and just be part of that, and with a lot of respect.
Ian Haggerty:There's enough room up here and opportunity and we'll encourage any one of our people or people wanting to come in and 100% support them to whatever venture they might want to start. As Di said, whether they want to start actually raising bees on the property, we'll support them. If they want to start raising chooks on the property and have a job and an occupation, learning and doing this at the same time, just open up all those opportunities to anyone who wants to come in and actually make a go of it and re-bring community out here and work at it. This sense of the country comes first.
