A Superhuman Finale to Grounded Festival WA: The Nutrient Density Conundrum

My host platform's automatic AI title suggestions for this episode were:

• The Riotous Wrap
• Turning a Closing Panel into a Playful Showdown
• When a Nutrient Density Guy Meets A Festival Founder and a Referee (guess that's me!), Chaos Ensues
• Taste as Truth
• If A Carrot Had Wi-Fi, It Would Ghost Your Microwave

Gives you an idea. Today we conclude our series from the Grounded Festival here in Australia, with a grand finale of a different flavour. Festival founder, curator, farmer, writer, broadcaster, Matthew Evans, had offered the slot to Dan Kittredge, also a farmer, and globally renowned advocate for nutrient density (you may have heard him on the podcast for episode 250 while we were still in his native US). 

Dan subsequently suggested to Matthew they do something different – that Matthew join Dan on stage, to challenge him a little. Matthew then turned to me to see if I’d round out the unholy trinity, in case Dan got out of hand (not really … well, maybe). Anyway, what everyone who was there that day all agreed on, was that this turned out to be a riot – a grounded, cosmic, hysterical end to a wonderful festival. And no one was spared.

Let’s head back to Galloway Springs Farm near Bridgetown WA, one more time.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 20 September 2025.

Title image: AJ, Matthew & Dan on stage (pic: Alan Benson).

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

Early bird tix for Grounded 2026 are out now, with a 10% discount for podcast subscribers, with thanks again to the festival team (I’ve sent the code to you on Patreon and Substack).

Music:

Rowdy, by The Lonely Ramblers (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage At Grounded
• 3:23 Nutrient Density In Plain Language
• 9:46 Measuring Variation And Why It Matters
• 11:06 The link between nutrition and higher function
• 14:55 Shifting vibe!
• 16:49 What Dan really wants
• 21:40 The paradox of nutrition?
• 22:35 Microbiomes Beat Chemistry
• 23:30 Matthew on his woo woo journey
• 26:13 Dan in total disagreement with Matthew
• 28:30 And AJ
• 31:05 Now for the audience
• 34:31 The thing Tyson Yunkaporta thinks about every day
• 36:15 Coherence, Vibration, And Food
• 38:25 How to get this story out to more people?
• 40:20 Women have 4 brains, men have 3
• 44:20 Science, Woo, And Where They Meet
• 45:36 The grand finale

Transcript

Matthew: 0:00

The idea with this session was for me to go, Dan, you talk about some weird shit. But I know you can talk about some weirder shit. And you know how I have this thing, you know, if you've got a recipe and you want to test it, don't do it at a dinner party. You know, so he and I probably should have done this over a beer.

AJ: 0:22

G'day, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, your ad-free, freely available listener-supported podcast, exploring how people are regenerating the systems and stories we live by. Today, we conclude our series from the Grounded Festival here in Australia with its grand finale. Well, it was the last session, and it had a bit of a different flavour. Festival founder, curator, farmer, writer, broadcaster Matthew Evans had offered the slot to Dan Kittredge, also a farmer and a globally renowned advocate for nutrient density. You may have heard him on the podcast for episode 250 while we were still in his native US. Dan subsequently suggested to Matthew that they do something different, that Matthew join Dan on stage to challenge him a little. Matthew then turned to me to see if I'd round out the unholy Trinity in case Dan got out of hand. Well, not really. Well, maybe. Anyway, what everyone who was there that day all agreed on was that this turned out to be a riot. A grounded, cosmic, hysterical end to a wonderful festival. And no one was spared. Let's head back to Galloway Springs Farm near Bridgetown WA. One more time. Alright, everyone. This is uh where you shuffle out quicker than you've had to, unfortunately, if you're not gonna be in this session. Uh, but if you are, welcome. This is uh gonna be a unique one to bring us home, although we're gonna have open mic after this too, but in terms of our formal presentations. Uh the nutrient density conundrum. I'm gonna introduce our guests. I mean, I know I probably don't have to, but but I want it for those, I don't want to assume that everybody knows who you're facing. So uh I'll give a brief introduction to both our guests and then we can uh delve into the unique nature of what this session's gonna be. So Dan Kittridge has been an organic farmer for more than 30 years and is the founder and executive director of the Bio-Nutrient Food Association, BFA, a non-profit whose mission is to increase quality in the food supply. Known as one of the leading exponents of nutrient density, all the way from Massachusetts, the USA, please welcome Dan Kittridge. Now, the bloke next to me, Matthew Evans, is chef turned farmer, writer, broadcaster, and food activist with Sadie Crestman. Is Sadie here? Everyone probably knows Sadie too, anyway. She's working in the bar.

Matthew: 2:50

You've sent her to the drink. I needed someone, uh, yeah, the the yes, yeah. She's she's she is yeah. She gave me one glass of wine and wouldn't give me another one, so so she's banished to the bar.

AJ: 3:03

So with Sadie, Matthew transformed an apple orchard into Fat Pig Farm in Tasmania's Hewing Valley and inspired by the UK's Groundswell Festival, co-founded this festival, launched at Fat Pig in 2024, and brought here now. And heads up, we're heading to Victoria in 2026. Yeah. But for now, please welcome Matthew Evans. Over to you, Matthew.

Matthew: 3:30

Thank you. So just uh uh uh first up, um, hands up if you were here yesterday and got to hear Dan. Anyone, oh well, do it the other way around. That's too hard. Do it the other way around. Anyone who wasn't here yesterday to hear Dan. Okay, enough. Okay. Maybe the best thing is to if Dan does like the the potted, can you do the potted version of nutrient density, what it is, what you're doing? Can you do that for like ten minutes? So we otherwise we don't frame it properly. Potted? Oh, brief.

Dan: 3:57

Brief. Um do it much more briefly than ten minutes. I see, has anybody ever had a tomato uh picked ripe out of the garden? Has anybody ever had a tomato uh picked off the shelf in the middle of the winter? Do you know the difference in your tongue? That's what nutrient density is. Um we are wired through evolution to discern what is good for us and for our then children and grandchildren if we think about it properly, and what is not. Uh we have very sophisticated inbuilt nutrient monitoring systems called tongues and and noses. And uh there's a massive variation of nutrients in food. Uh even though the government may tell us that all apples are uniform or all carrots are uniform or all beef is uniform, um, that is categorically not the case. And um we're wired with the ability to discern what's good for us and what's not. We call it flavor and aroma. Um that variation is massive. I run an organization, an NGO, I'm not sure what you guys call them here, charities NGOs. NGOs, we are. Yeah, um, we call them nonprofits in the U.S. Um educational organization. I uh coined the term nutrient density almost 17 years ago to um initiate this conversation around this nutrient variation in food, which I thought was a really important thing once I figured out that it was a thing, and I didn't see the organic people talking about it, or the biodynamic people talking about it, or the permaculturalists talking about it, or the local wars talking about it. Everybody was assuming they were better, but kind of assuming everything was uniform. Uh, but there wasn't really actually any proper thought going into this conversation. So, yeah, we've been doing a bunch of research, um, characterizing that the scale of that variation. Um, I think I talked about it in some depth yesterday. Starting in 2017 uh through 2021, we took 10,000 samples of crop from two continents from 25 different types of crop uh from hundreds of farms, grocery stores, farmers' markets, and and looked at just a few nutrients, and we found that the variation, depending on which nutrient we're looking at, was uh 5x, 10x, 20x, 40x.

Matthew: 6:07

He means times when he says X? X.

Dan: 6:09

So five times. If you were to I didn't know that when I first heard that, just in case. Sorry, that's a science thing. Um or uh or a I guess maybe it was an economics thing. Yeah, if you were to look at the carrot with the highest level of sulfur, it had four times as much sulfur as the one with the lowest level. If you look at the carrot that had the highest level of antioxidants, it had 40 times as many as the one with the lowest level. So um, there's a whole bunch of different nutrients in food. Um we're taught to think about copper and zinc and vitamin C and vitamin D, and uh those are all sort of Western rational constructs about individual nutrients, but actually what we're evolved to eat is food. Um, and we try to take apart food into its component parts. There's hundreds of thousands or millions or even tens of millions of different individual nutrients in food. So this whole way of trying to identify food through numbers of individual nutrients is a bit of a false framing, but it's the way the culture works now, and so we're playing along with it. But the basic point is that variation in food is massive. Um it connects to our noses and our tongues, it connects to our health, it connects to the function of our you know systems, whether they're physiological, psychological, emotional, um, connects to the health of our children, connects to uh the health of the soil, um, the function of the ecosystem, and so I think that that roughly cover the question.

Matthew: 7:33

Yeah, that's great. So the way and the work Dan's done is trying to look at, you know, um, is there a difference in nutrient density? What what what you know can you measure it and how how you might you know what those nutrients are, I guess, and and and what uh how we can influence that through farming systems. So would that a sort of a brief summary of what you've been doing? And and uh you know, is there a handheld device for those of you that weren't here yesterday that that um they a prototype that they developed that you can point at one carrot versus another carrot and show um higher nutrients in one than another, you you know, that you could actually in theory put on your have you know someone put on your phone to be able to tell in the shop before you buy um one brand of carrots or one farmer's carrots within another. That's about it.

Dan: 8:14

Yeah, well um the the the vision is that people who buy food, um who in many cases want the best for themselves and their families when they buy food should have the ability to know of the three steak options or milk options or potato options on the shelf, which one is better, which one's worse. And it doesn't seem to correlate with organic or local or regenerative or any of the other marketing frameworks. Um nutritional caliber is does not correlate with those things. Um how would you know? How would you be able if there's I mean I use the example of carrots in the US and there's I say there's bunny love and there's bolt house farms and there's calorganic. Those are just three brands of carrots. Um and if you were to look at those three and say, I want the one that's gonna taste the best, that's gonna have the highest level of nutrients that my children are most likely to eat, it's a bit of a crapshoot. There's no way necessarily to be able to discern that in real time. But there's a science called spectroscopy, which is that thing which is what we use to know what stars are made up of hundreds of millions of light years away, um, which basically says everything in chemistry is a vibration in physics. Um and effectively you can flash a light at something, and by taking a picture of the light bouncing off of it, you can see what it's made up of. And so the technology seems to be there, like it is actually this has already been done. Smartphone companies have put in the camera, in the phone, a mini spectrometer. So the you know, the vision before this decade is out is that many, many, many, many people have in their smartphone a mini spectrometer with the calibration set so that you pull it out of your pocket, you flush it at the bag of carrots, 20 out of 100, 40 out of 100, 80 out of 100. So we can use the economic incentive, money being a powerful vector in today's day and age, to incentivize the supply chain to focus on quality as opposed to volume. Right now, the whole agricultural system is effectively focused on volume, aesthetic and volume, um, and is driven to apply lots of chemistry, uh, whether it's uh fertilizers or insecticides, fungicides, etc. And we all know about the negative implications of that. So um it sure looks like, as well, from our research, that the thing that causes the levels of nutrients to increase in food is the function of the microbiome. So the greater the diversity, the greater the population of the bottom of the food chain, the people who evolved us and the people who evolved the plants, the microbes, the more well they're doing, the more nutrients there are in the food. The more chemistry you apply, generally, the less well the microbes are doing. So there's a direct negative incentive to apply chemistry if you're focusing on nutrition. So we use the economic incentive to transform the supply chain.

Matthew: 11:06

So I just want to unpack that a bit, because I was I gave a talk uh a little while ago we talked about some of these similar things in terms of the human capacity to tell what's in food. But if you look at what plagues humanity, uh it's not um a lack of terpenes, is it? It's or polyphenols, like antioxidants. Isn't it like vitamin A deficiency, iron deficiency, protein deficiency are the big problems as uh you know in terms of nutrition from that we that humans are getting generally? And uh and and your stuff is obviously looking at on a much smaller scale, but if you've got say 150,000 chemicals in uh uh known chemicals in in broccoli, um like how many of them do we actually know are actually having an impact on human health?

Dan: 11:52

What is human health? What is flourishment? You know, I mean in the US we have this thing called an RDA, the recommended daily allowance. You know, you have an RDA for vitamin C, you have an RDA for vitamin D, you have an RDA for iron and zinc, and the way they determine the RDA is um how much do you need to not be dead? Um so you can call it the MDA, the minimum daily allowance. Um but doctors prescribe, call it what they prescribe, you know, your choice of terms. Um once you're diagnosed with an ailment, just because you're not diagnosable with an ailment, does that mean you're healthy? Um I would say there's a continuum of vitality in humans, we can call that one to a hundred. One of our elders in this sort of community, my who I consider being an elder, a guy named Dr. Carrie Reims, said, I think, you know, you have to be below 30% in your vitality level to have a disease be diagnosable. So what do you need to function optimally and what do you need to not be dead are two very far apart things. What is the potential of humanity? If we look at indigenous cultures and their apparent profound capacity to perceive and communicate, you know, my understanding is part of that is because of the complex biochemistry that they're ingesting. Um so um I can't that there's a book, I think it's called Left in the Dark, um, about the left brain and the right brain and and you know our evolutionary history. And when we were earlier primates and we were having lots of fruit that had lots of color and lots of intense flavor, our left brains and our right brains were actually working more well together. We weren't they weren't separate. Um and and our ability to perceive more subtle realities was was normative. So um, yeah, my understanding is that those secondary metabolites, those things we call flavor and aroma, um call them polyphenols, call them terpenoids, call them alkaloids, uh that's what uh we call them in science, you know, at high levels are foundational in our higher level function. So uh I think I said this yesterday. Um I personally have a bit of an agenda um which is raising consciousness. Um I think that you know the potential of humanity is profound and the current level of function is far from that. And so um I see you know improving quality of the food supply, I call it a spiritual covert op. Um through improving the nature of who we are, by improving the nature of what we build our bodies out of, our higher potentials are then able to become more and more manifest. So I'm not particularly I I don't particularly care about zinc and iron and vitamin C and vitamin D. I think those are sort of Western rational constructs that are coming from a reductionist paradigm and perspective. What I'm concerned about is that overall coherence of the thing. Um I was having a beautiful conversation with a woman from Uruguay, I think, earlier today, uh, about prana and and vibration and harmonics. And um I what's that?

Matthew: 15:10

That vibrations and harmonics as an example. Yeah. That's my white cover.

AJ: 15:17

No, please, then uh one please.

Dan: 15:29

No, I'm good, I'm good.

Matthew: 15:30

I'm not gonna take your time. No rush. Yeah, what we want is big picture thingy at the end of the day. This is supposed to be a fun session, so that's great. That's thank you for that. Um not done. I was I know, but what we want is questions. You hesitated, so I just want the I was being polite and waiting for people to stop laughing. Just just I'm in the middle of a stream of thought. I know, but you keep that stream thought. I got it. But we want your questions, so we're gonna need you to actually participate, maybe not like that, okay, in a minute. So just while he's talking, he's going after that's good further than he would normally go in these sort of talks.

Dan: 15:59

Okay. Um I like to go as far as I people will let me go, so this is great fun. I'm already heading off to the stratosphere.

Audience: 16:06

Um spiritual covert off. I did.

Dan: 16:09

I I saw a couple nods. I saw a couple nods. I think we got some covert, covert spiritual people here. Um I it's uh it's unfortunate that um we all have this deeper reality which guides us, most of us actually, that we don't feel comfortable talking about, that we don't even actually necessarily even have language for. Um so I would say that's that's part of the opportunity here is is is to feel is to begin to norm normalize that and to own that and to feel comfortable and confident in that. Um but we can get back to that. I do want to finish my topic about the coherence. Um I think you know vibrational coherence, you know, is actually what I want. When I started this vision of building a meter and building a tool, what I wanted was a coherence meter. I wanted a meter that could test the vibrational coherence of the food. Because I don't think it actually is about the nutrients. I think it's about the harmonics and the vibration, the octaves of resonance. You know, what is the nature of all the compounds, right? This whole concept of compounds and things, right? Like water is considered to be a compound and protein is considered to be a compound. If you actually pull them all apart, there's a there's a lipid, there's a protein, there's a whatever, DNA is a big one. 98% of the compounds in your body are water. People know about the magic that is water? This harmonic vibrational resonant liquid crystal, like propagating frequency, like projecting frequency, receiving frequency, right? We're actually functionally antenna systems. That's really what's going on here. Is this it's uh is life is engaging through vibration. That's how that's how life seems to communicate. The shape of a leaf looks like an antenna. Insects on their heads have antenna. That's how they perceive what plants are fit to eat and which plants are not, is by their vibe. Right? This is actually the way nature communicates, it's through vibration. That's how we're able to communicate with the trees and the plants and the animals and the nature spirits, is through harmonics, is through vibration. We have this Western rational physical plane paradigm where taught is reality, and even the physicists tell us it's only 90%, it's 5% of reality. The physical plane is 5% of reality, according to the physicists. 95% is somewhere else. It's not on the physical plane, it's in the these other octaves of reality. That is the fact, according to the scientists, and we're all talking about the physical plane, as though that's everything. Right? I mean, that's just a completely stupid thing to do if you think about it, but we continue to do it without thinking about it because that's what we're trained to do. Um I wanted a coherence meter. Um and so's that going step by step. I got my end game, I know where I'm going. I'm playing along like, you know, I'm in, I'm we're gonna do a scientific experiment, we're gonna get everything randomized, replicated trials, we're gonna do triplicate samples, we're gonna look at the microbiome, we're gonna look at the biochemistry, we're gonna do statistical significance and publish in nature, right? So hide behind the Western rational empirical framework because that's where the that's where the zeitgeist is, that's where the industry is, that's where you can uh achieve formal legitimacy, but never stop talking about the fact that there's a hell of a lot more going on out there, and that's where we're headed. So um what I was saying about water and harmonics and vibration, um, you know, the vast majority of our of our body is is that is water. We are vibrating the liquid crystal, and that's the vast majority of what plants are, right? It's the vast majority of what milk is, it's the vast majority of what meat is. I don't think it's so much about the biochemistry of the plant. I think it's much more about the harmonic of the plant. But that's going to be a more expensive, more time-consuming, you know, down-the-track process. So um there's a big, a big agenda here over time. Really, of course, as I said before, we shouldn't need external instruments. It's not about external instruments, it's about tuning the instrument that God gave you. Right? This instrument of perception, which is the thing you carry around with you, you being different from the instrument of perception is the thing we need to be remembering. Right? It's not about the telescope and the microscope and the spectrometer, it's about this multidimensional, multi-octave, profound instrument that we carry around with us, and remembering that that is where truth resides. And each of us has our own truth. What's right for me is not right for you. How do I know? Because it makes me feel better. If something makes me feel less good, that's my multidimensional instrument of perception communicating with me. We're not taught to attune, attend to that perception which is immediately available to all of us. Right? And we can't actually make right decisions until we actually begin to put our attention where it belongs, which is within. If that thing we're carrying around with us is vibrating out of tune, it's having a harder time giving us good information. We're having a harder time tuning into it to perceive that deeper guidance. So strategically, we have to figure out how to get those instruments of perception, which are the bodies we carry around with us, to vibrate more harmoniously, to guide us in our deeper selves more well. Um that's the agenda with nutrient density that I'm trying to accomplish. Who thought it would go there? Well, yeah.

AJ: 21:47

I'd love to I want to come I also want to come back to you on this. But to pick up because you you ended up where I was already going, but I want to take the segue from it then, Dan, that so the material reality's well, physical plane, five percent of reality, yet vital. So yeah, it's interesting to hear you talk like that, but to think that nutrition in our food matters. It's like it's critical. We even being a you know, a slither of reality, it's a lot of people.

Dan: 22:19

Well, the food is not, I mean, so the harmonic of the water in the cucumber, is it vibrating harmoniously, you know, on five octaves? Or did it get irradiated because of food safety and now it's like dissonant? And it may have a proper balance of quote unquote proper balance of polyphenols and and copper and zinc, but the actual harmonica of it's not there. What happens when you microwave things? I mean, not even talking about what kind of state of mind are you in when you eat? Are you angry? Did you just have a fight? How was the cooking done? Did you cook with love? Were you joyfully and lovingly with passion cooking for your family, or were you pissed and resentful? And I damn it, I had to cook again, and I'm just gonna throw it together. Or was it a you know a processed product that in factory you know isolated and put into a bar and is a designed to maximize profit? Right? I mean these are deeper questions about what the hell where is going on here.

AJ: 23:25

Um I feel like it's a good opportunity for me to ask you a question.

Matthew: 23:29

Oh, I'm just I've been left a long way behind in this conversation.

AJ: 23:39

So, as the boy who was brought up by a scientist and has talked about uh well written so much and talked about that, but but I sense has come to what you used to call woo-woo a little over the years. How are you hearing that?

Matthew: 23:58

Yeah, that's a great question. You were picking up on a lot there. Um anyone else clenching in the audience as he was talking? I don't know. Uh yeah, look, I said to someone earlier, like uh, uh, because they were saying, Oh, this is really I didn't expect it to be like this. Yeah, so all like kumbayar circles and woo-woo, you know, and here we are. Um Heidi's session, yes, so we did it, you know, not quite, but we had a singing circle and stuff. But like that's actually the magic. Look, I've just read a book called The Light Eaters, I don't know if anyone's seen that, but this is a really great book about how plant intelligence, right? And there's these plants in South America that that can mimic other plants. So they essentially grow, it's a vine, it grows next to another plant, and it can mimic the exact colour and leaf, well, not always exact, it's hard with variegated leaves and other things, but they can they can pretty much mimic the plant next to them, right? How does it do that if it can't see? You know, so so this book that's about it's all science, a science writer out of the US, it's a pretty hard book to buy in Australia at the moment, but um it's all stuff that that science is having a real problem explaining, you know, and this idea we know we can measure these, you know, these uh um you know electromagnetic fields out you know, distance from humans, we know that that we don't finish here in in microbiome or in our energy fields and all that kind of stuff. And I think a lot of us have questions about shit that we can't explain that science has trouble explaining. So I probably, you know, this is why we want to have a session like this, because I'd probably, you know, I don't Dan's the idea with this session was for me to go, Dan, you talk about some weird shit. But I know you can talk about some weirder shit. And you know how I have this thing, you know, if you've got a recipe and you want to test it, don't do it at a dinner party, you know. So he and I probably should have done this over a beer.

AJ: 25:48

You do get the rough draft.

Matthew: 25:49

But you're getting a rough draft, yeah, exactly. So yeah, no, that's my view. Is it's is like, and I know you're you're probably much more attuned to this sort of stuff than me, but when I look at the scientific field and I look at the stuff we can't explain, and I look at the miracle of plants, which is what I'm delving into at the moment, there is so much we cannot explain through through the normal scientific um method, you know, because they seem to be able to hear, they seem to be able to talk, they seem to be able to see, um, and yet they don't have a central nervous system, eyes, ears, and brains. I d completely disagree with you.

Dan: 26:19

Good. The the science So the scientific method is a method, and it you know even in formal Western rational peer-reviewed published papers, the science is there to explain these things you're talking about. It may not be in the mainstream university literature, but go to Russia to check out this piece, go to you know, Brazil to check out that piece. This is whenever I teach my courses, I spend the last hour and a half on the literature which explains the rest of it all. We actually do have in the Western rational, you know, peer-reviewed, published literature formal logical uh explanations for all these dynamics. So um that's what's exciting to me, is it actually can be explained. There is a logical pathway. Give me any question and I can you know direct you to uh uh what it seems to me, what I think is actually a a very viable you know causal relationship for these dynamics.

AJ: 27:18

It's interesting to hear you say that today.

Dan: 27:20

I love science. Science is beautiful. Science is a method of of of finding truth, right? It's it's the you know you you experiment, you try this and see what happens, you it try that and see what happens, develop a theory, you know, test it test it over and over again. That the scientific method is a is I call it you know the opportunity to find a lingua franca. Instead of having us each have our own perspectives, which are all great, but they're all different perspectives, the scientific method is a way that we can identify what seems to be truth. I'm I'm a big fan of it. I just think you know what it's like science gets a bad name because it's oftentimes used for propagandistic purposes. That makes it not science. That makes it propaganda. Right? There's there's spirituality which is profound, and then there's religion. Religion oftentimes perverts spirituality, right? Um God, I love, call what you want to call it, I think it's a real thing and it's really profound. A lot of things that are done in the name of God are perverse and and dark, right? That doesn't make them actually working in the name in the truth of what God is, that's a perversion of it. So science as well is used in that way, but that's has to do with ego, that has to do with the foibles of humanity, not with the principle of the thing.

AJ: 28:34

It's really interesting to see hear you say that, Dan. And you know, I was already thinking about Einstein in this context as someone who did nominally link him up in his own mind and how he went about even tapping creativity as he used to talk about. But thinking about cultural stories, and that his work was what, a hundred years ago or something, yet we're still such a heavily reductionist culture. So I I take stock of what you're saying about that the science is there, but it's not pervading the cultural story, because even his science hasn't really pervaded the cultural story.

Dan: 29:10

To say that we are all operating from a similar culture is is completely ridiculous. Right? I mean, you go into any town and any country on any continent, and you go on a road and you talk to the people in each house on that road, and you talk to each person in each house, and they all have completely different perspectives. Right? There is no uniform, dominant cultural paradigm. Like we all each secretly have our own perspectives. What I find when I talk to people, and I talk to a lot of people in a lot of places, is most of them are coming from a pretty deep place. And so we can like project onto culture, like, oh, this bad, oh that bad, oh, so many bad things. But if you actually go and talk to people and you get involved in a deep conversation, most people, in my experience, are operating from a pretty profound place. And it's really exciting. you know, i from a professional position to be now in a place where I'm talking to people at major multinational corporations, at major global philanthropies, at major researchers in Washington, D.C. and government in like quote unquote places of power where all the dark forces are and you find the people in those places are actually really good, deep, well-meaning people who are operating from a very high level in a lot of cases. So I don't think it does us any good to continue to say these things negative about ourselves. And that's not even talking about the indig indigenous peoples right who are also here, who are completely being ignored and othered or you know disappeared by that statement. I I really don't think it helps to have these kind of frames and to repeat them. Sorry, that's just a pushback there.

Audience: 30:55

I need to be sorry.

Dan: 30:56

Well not sorry, I don't want to be yeah whatever. There I've said it. Do you want to go questions?

Matthew: 31:04

I haven't seen your hands go up.

AJ: 31:05

You shut them both down so there we go to you guys. Who's next? Yeah. Give me another one.

Audience: 31:14

Sorry Matt I'm gonna uh keep going with Dan on this one. So uh it's a great topic and I absolutely love it. Um what are you doing? This is just for me to try and understand on a personal level on a day-to-day level what are you doing to keep that vibration um and um harmony in your life and in your body um not as much as I should or could um um what am I doing?

Dan: 31:35

I like vibrating um can we dive deeper into that something different in America I don't think I've ever seen a vibrator in my entire life um so um yeah I I think I touched on it yesterday but I spent some time early in my life up in the Himalayas and I practiced the science of the East which is thousands of years older than the science of the West their books are thousands of years older than our books. It's profound it's multidimensional they have a regular practice of having people achieve enlightenment as like a sign of success in their culture. It's not a PhD it's enlightenment is success in that culture. Like for starters let's get some humility about hey how many of us are there Westerners and how many non-Westerners are there? Just just just for context right all the all the Westerners is like one billion if you take Australia you take Europe you take North America you're you're not even quite maybe right 1.4 in India 1.4 in China anybody ever been? Like they operate from a different set of assumptions just so we're clear the the things we've been trained we're a minority those of us who are operating from this Western rational quote unquote paradigm is not normal. This is not normal in humanity A in time or B in sheer number of humans um so there's a science of the East that is thousands of years old which teaches you how to cause and effect do this have that result do this have that result um I found it in the Vedas um the tantras the techniques are there I can direct anybody to a series of books which you can buy for $10 $15 which will transform your frickin' life it's right there in English in print if you want. And so you do that for a couple minutes a day or 10 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day. I did that for two winters in the Himalayas in 99 and 2000. And I'm still running on the residual of that like I wake up in the morning and I whatever chakra is flowing I just lay there in bed and vibrate and I just let that higher octave of vibration sort of resonate through my body. So that's what I mean by vibrating. I like it it's fun it really is deeper pleasure than anything else. It's profound pleasure just to lay there in that octave to be able to tune your perspective to that octave and use this instrument of perspective perception to engage like it's it's amazing what's out there. It's amazing what we have never been exposed to that to like it there's so much it's amazing to think that the human body is such a multidimensional instrument of perception and communication you know Tyson Young Caporte is probably not a fella you've heard of I have you have okay Sandtalk?

AJ: 34:49

Yeah Sandtalk exactly yeah so in Sand Talk in fact there was a line where he said there's something he thinks about every day and as I'm reading the book and we're about to do a podcast I'm thinking every day? Far out so I'm gonna ask him I ask him no one's asked him about that in a podcast before he he's in tears about it. This moment that moved him so much and it was viewing some footage of Andaman Islanders some years prior. You've heard this right I know what the Andaman Islander is yeah wow exactly I mean how they how they escaped the tsunami for example they knew it was coming and the machinery didn't yeah that the stories can be compounded. But Tyson remembers this footage of first contact no less he describes it sort of like this that there's this couple man and woman equally as ripped as each other and with a fierceness in their eyes you know he says as if to say what to the camera and he never was able to track it down again but he never forgot it and it was a it was a touchstone for him and then for our conversation from that point on around well he used the terminology superhuman but only relative to as he would say the fragmentation of what we've become in this moment. Yeah but that that was a norm.

Dan: 36:03

And I think about that when I hear you say that's the inherent potential of us all and the effect of colonization is to separate us from that. That's the essence of every child that's born is the and every child that's born is that potential is there in them and what we do is profound child abuse in perverting them to fit into this atrocious dynamic. So to me thinking strategically forward the real question is how can we create a dynamic where the children that are born are able to have their true nature become manifest. Right? And when where I come from we have this um what do they call it the the law of the seven generations every decision that's taken has to pass muster with the question will this cause my descendants seven generations forward to be better if I do this instead of that every single decision has to pass that test. I think I mean I'm 48 now and like not a kid anymore. I'm not getting that old yet but I'm 50 is like close. I'm getting to start thinking about this. I'm getting to start thinking about this and like strategically culturally how do we need to be orienting ourselves and and for me these are the critical questions how do we create a dynamic so that maybe in two generations our children are not perverted so profoundly by these dynamics of what we call culture. Right? I mean because the essence of that brilliance of that superhumanness is is is our birthright is the essence of what each of us is and that's just I mean these are the things we I I think need to be like instead of fighting this talking bad about this like there's a million things you can easily get worked up about like oh this is bad blah blah blah blah blah how about every single conversation is how can we optimize? What's the best path forward? What can we do better? How can I help? Right? I mean it's what questions you ask where you put your attention and your and your intention is the reality you create. Right we can we are brilliant profound creators it's just the question is what are we creating?

Audience: 38:25

Where's Tegan? Got someone beauty um Nikolai Tesla the the father of what we call the modern world invented multi-power systems but he was all about vibrations all his work and a lot of that's been suppressed my sense is the things that are happening around the world we're in a real tipping point in history what's happening in America with the Maha movement and you know the the the the food system we've got's been driven by marketing and the media and what you're talking about is getting back to first principles. How do we get that message out to the the wider population of eaters? We've got this thing about consumerism and consumers but I like to think we need to talk about eaters not consumers.

Dan: 39:09

Um I'm doing what I can do um I think each of us there's eight billion of us plus or minus each you know if we each do what each of us can do that's all we can do. It's not about you know as soon as you start thinking about other people you're missing the point because you can't control other people the only thing you can control is you and the only thing you can do is the best you can do. So get your head out of the future get your head out of other people and get into the moment and say you know what can I do now and then say it again what can I do now and keep doing that all day long every day going forward. There's nothing else what can I do now? What is my unique calling what am I called to do from within you know we each have a piece of the puzzle and the more of us that you know step into our pieces more deeply the more rapidly you know things well that is what will decide what happens is how each of us engages our own lives I would say but we're getting philosophical here not talking about nutrient per se we had to transcend the conundrum that we were put up with huh? I have said this is the second half of my career. No one's I haven't said that publicly yet I haven't explained what the second half of my career is yeah um thanks very much um apologies I in terms of sentience for trees and stuff I think Matthew was touching on that example but there's actually a research study done in UWA Gagliano that proved that ran the Pavlov's dog experiment with plants and proved there is a consciousness. So we're the you know we just need to accept that and get start looking deeper into that but my interest is in the is the organization of intelligence within beings such as plants that that have this armory of chemical responses and and needs that so obviously it's a depository of intelligence somewhere we we have a brain we think the intelligence held on the on the electric synapse but I think it's actually held in the organisation of water and I I I think one of your lecturers at one of your nutritional conferences was starting to deep dive into the organise the ability of water to organize and to code and it do you have you kind of looked further into that that kind of space in terms of science because that's pin that really would start to pinprick where uh the power of intention placed with water and obviously Dr. Emoto I think it was a Japanese guy kind of proved the ability to put personality so just probably some enlightenment is is there any more advance in that space and your perception of the the water as the true vessel of intelligence? I don't think water is the true vessel of intelligence. I think water is the is the physical form vibrating liquid crystal through which communication comes and goes I think it's the matrix that you know holds the vibration that we propagate into the environment and that receives vibrations from the environment that it's a vibrating liquid crystal that's what it that how it serves and we're just a basically a doped bag of water like as in we're a big bag of water with a few other things in it. And what we're basically doing is functioning as antenna to perceive frequencies coming at us and then through the vibrations we're holding we're propagating frequency into the environment. Where intelligence is held or what is intelligence or is it intelligence or is it consciousness I think there's a really good book called The Field. Anyone know the field? Yeah Lynn McTaggart thank you very much yeah Lyndon McTaggart uh was an investigative journalist who did this research uh talking to two uh neuroscientists asking them where memories are stored and um anybody know where memories are stored? Exactly in the field uh yeah it it seems that our you know that our our neurons these brain cells right anybody know about the neurons there's a bunch of them in their in your brain right there's a bunch of them in your heart there's a bunch of them in your gut so if an organ full of neurons is a brain then functionally we all have three brains and that neuron is basically this long filamentous hair which is functioning like an antenna which is which is picking up vibrations from the field around it. Women actually have a fourth organ full of neurons called a uterus so I like to say um you guys have four brains we have three so never give us a hard time don't say that's what they gotta go easy don't give us a hard time don't give us a hard time like there we go I'm with you again no it's it's we are who we are you are who you are like don't expect us to be who you are like we can't see what you can see. Don't anyway um in Sanskrit they call it the Akashic record the field right I mean when when Steiner was asked how did you figure out all these things he's like duh it was in the Akashic record. What's the Akashic record? That's a Sanskrit term. I like to say if you were to have a a pool of totally still water and chuck a rock into it and somebody was to come around a corner ten seconds later and look at that pool they could see what happened right based on the ripples. Well every thought you have sends a ripple into the space-time continuum every action has a ripple imagine that imagine that everything has an effect right that's not too far out of the realm of science on some level everything you do every heart every feeling you have that anger that love every idea every action effectively has a ripple and what the antenna of our brains do is read the ripples so that's my understanding um is that the so yeah I'm not sure that covers it but still with us?

Audience: 45:15

Oh yeah I was thinking about you know what's the dinner man that was a faction that was trying to be a faction picked up on the vibration so you get over to you who we got yep I'm interested more in the spectrometer given that we're not all farmers and we need a trade so that there's the money the capitalism how do you have a plan on like how to portray quality of food like obviously this is an example and like sharing is a big example but then like on that you know that broad scale corporate level I suppose it which is the world we're living in like how can the spectrometer like this is the instrument you're going with how can that help you or help us to understand that this food is better like how can you explain that to I don't know the the the lay person or the average person in this world?

Dan: 46:25

I think I want to take that um and go a little bit different direction because I it's a big long conversation and covered it pretty well yesterday. There's something I do want to do here today and I don't know how much time we have left so I'm gonna just do it right now. I almost never ever ever get on stage with an intention or a plan to do anything. That's not the case. Today I got on stage with an intention and a plan to do something and I haven't yet done it. Yeah. This was just the curtain riser where we're going where we're going Matt as I said a bit ago um the future doesn't exist uh we can all have our sort of general like intentions or trajectories we're aiming toward the most important thing is now the moment now and what can we do now? So in the trajectory of the vision of the spectrometer there is something we can do now we can have a thing in our hand which we can use to measure the quality of food which we can actually tell other people about and help them understand and engage a shift in purchasing purchasing and you know have that begin to ripple forward through the supply chain and all of its other implications. We are at the BFA at the final stages of this thing we're calling the BRICSit uh kit. People have heard of the refractometer um it's been around I think 195 years um and I don't think I need to go into depth about what it is the refractometer measures bricks um so effectively what we're doing at the BFA is is we're building this app. We're taking a refractometer and a garlic press and we built a little a little coin that you stick in the garlic press to keep the pulp from coming through. And we built an app and so we're inviting people to take their shopping take an extra 10 minutes take a chunk out of each zucchini and carrot and tomato and cucumber squish it and upload onto the app the number along with the date of purchase the point of purchase and the brand and so the thought is if you get 10 people in any given town or city to begin doing that in fairly short order you begin to have a database which says generally this brand at this store is better than that brand or generally stuff at this store is better than that store or generally this farmer at the farmer's market is better than that farmer at the farmer's market. This is something we haven't yet released. I'm hoping we'll release it next month but I have the world's very first kit that I want to give to someone who I think is extremely special. So I think I did with a ball of love I don't know how many people go to how many events and conferences and how many places but I go to a bunch and I just want to say what you guys do with this grounded event have done now two for two is completely epic. Absolutely completely epic me squirm again every single little thing is thought about I I've got the toilet he was timing he was timing sunset with dinner right like every single little thing this it's the vibe on the land, the people the speakers the the whole thing it's so it's so whole and I just want to really acknowledge that and affirm that and appreciate that because it's it is really really unique.

AJ: 50:35

Matthew Evans Dan Kittredge Thanks guys thank you all for being here as we wrap up the main program thanks for having me too what a week it's been in WA huh what a week to to have this crown that week is huge. I want to just dig down a little bit into the thank yous I did see Georgie at the back is Ollie around too but you probably if you haven't met Ollie and Georgie and Nadia the team that accompanies Matthew we'll probably have them up later at the thing so yeah great she's just talking she won't hear me but yeah we'll we'll make a big deal of them later but um but thank you to the whole team Matthew Sadie obviously and of course Tegan over here thank you very much and all the volunteers really uh who's made this happen the presenters obviously and the sponsors too you know you you called it out at the top Matthew it just couldn't happen without and much less at the price we're managing to access it at uh our hosts the Johnson family here at Galloway Springs of course yeah in fact in fact I started today and and bless perhaps some of you were in here with a massive roar to send out across the fields to anyone who played a part in making really to now to everyone who made this happen the way it did. So can we sum the biggest roar and applause we can right in this moment to send that out to everybody hip hip a rady That's a wrap for Grounded 2025. Thank you again to the grounded crew for generously providing that recording and of course to you supporting listeners for making this episode possible. Enormous thanks to Julia Holt for your very generous support this week sent with no way of thanking you but this and simply writing thanks for the podcast. Special thanks to to two more of the most generous supporters of this podcast for over four years now Peter Bate and Ed Surgeon. So grateful for the three of you. If you'd like to join us be part of this great community get some exclusive stuff including a discount to the next grounded festival all while helping to keep the show going, I'd love you to. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. EarlyBird ticks for Grounded 2026 are out now with a 10% discount for podcast subscribers with thanks again to the festival team. I've sent the code to you on Patreon and Substack for you to see wherever you subscribe. This will be Grounded's biggest staging yet this time at the legendary Stewart's farm in the Otways of Victoria in April. You might remember Kristy Stewart back in episode 132 on a special spot for her on that farm. I'll be there fresh off our Murray River course and hope to see you there too. The Grounded podcast is also close at hand it'll launch soon with all their recordings so far. And finally you can find a few more photos from today's panel conversation on The RegenNarration website the music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden. My name's Anthony James thanks for listening just request because we're gonna be on wash up duty so we won't get back to the mic but we really want to just quickly say something Oh if you're if you're doing the washing thank you okay so the the question that that we put up here is why don't I lick my plate so raise of hands who here licks their plate clean? Al right out of everyone else who would be willing to give it a go to lick their plate for the greater good? it's the best part of the dish it has got all the oils and the flavors and when you lick it off the plate it doesn't end up in the washing water. It keeps it clean and great