Bushy, Kate and Jed are chatting country vs city. How do our carbon footprints compare depending on where we inhabit? The team look at how community, choice and resilience are factors in our way of life and our environmental impact.
Adam, Kate, Jed are joined by former guest Rafael Schouten, who studies plant physiology and energy dynamics. Together, they use some scientific literacy to consider viral environmental videos, talking thermodynamics, algae for biofuel and indoor grow-light vertical farming. Plus, they look to the future with emerging technologies.
Alanta Colley chats all things bees with Bushy, Adam and Jed ahead of her Comedy Festival show "Days Of Our Hives". Colley is public health practitioner, comedian and co-founder of Sci Fight Science Comedy Debate held at the Spotted Mallard. She has performed for the Gates Foundation, Adelaide's Science Exchange and is a regular at Political Asylum and the Laboratory. By day she teaches engineering students about international development, by night she tells jokes about bees to confused crowds....
Are we lonelier than we have ever been? Jed, Kate and Adam chat with Julian Able, Director of Compassionate Communities UK and a consultant in palliative care, currently in Cornwall. Together, we look at ways of dealing with connection and community.
Adam chats with keynote speaker, Dr Lenore Newman, at the Urban Agriculture Forum. They tackle urban food security, peri-urban farming and sustainable food systems. Adam, Kate and Jed sit down in studio with Andrew Butt, Senior Lecturer in community planning and development at La Trobe, to follow up on some of these ideas.
Bushy, Kate and Jed chat with special guest and agrarian pioneer Melissa Connors. Melissa packed up her bags and took to the countryside, eventually founding 'This Farm Needs a Farmer', building a bridge in the gap of hand-me-down knowledge in agriculture and farmers.
Bushy, Jed and Adam chat with Dr Samuel Alexander, founder of the Simplicity Institute and author of many books, and a new as-yet-unpublished essay 'Carbon Civilization and the Energy Descent Future' , written with Joshua Floyd. They talk about making cooking gas (biogas) from your household compost, as Sam is doing in his own backyard, and while they're at it, look at the history of how energy has influenced the cultural evolution and structures of the human race....
Bushy, Kate and Jed chat with Gilbert Rochecouste from Village Well . Gilbert is a leading voice in placemaking. His catalyst ideas have regenerated iconic places and enlivened many urban and rural communities. Gilbert sees the potential of placemaking to inspire a deeper cultural and social environmental awareness and stewardship to make a difference both locally and globally.
Adam, Kate, Sarah and Jed are back in the studio for the first episode of 2018, reflecting on what caught their eyes over the summer break; From the state of Adani, to Soul Food Farms, varying ecological cultures across the globe, and more.
One of the many battles we face going forward in a world of resource depletion, economic instability and political upheaval, is that it seems that our ability to organise and coordinate as a group is dying. The whole team is here to close 2017, talking about group dynamics, communication and how we might save our collective skins by learning to communicate better and establishing team goals.
Can we help reverse climate change while creating more productive, profitable, ecologically functional and beautiful rural landscapes? Connor Stedman joins us to argue the case that yes, we can. Connor is a field ecologist, environmental planner, and farm planner at Appleseed Permaculture in New York state, USA, and runs an internationally recognised course on 'carbon farming'. Books mentioned: The Carbon Farming Solution by Eric Toensmeier and Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken ....
Sometimes it feels like billionaire Elon Musk - the Paypal co-founder and and main force behind SpaceX and Tesla Motors - is single handedly revitalising that mid-20th Century spirit of can-do capitalism, upgraded with a eco-green racing stripe. He's a company owner that's captured the public imagination in a way that makes Apple's Steve Jobs seem so pedestrian. Elon also says he can bring a human telepathy device to market in four years, and that he's planning to build a city on Mars. His compa...
What exciting crops can we grow in the backyard that you can't readily get in the supermarket, and what crops are adapted to a warming climate? We're joined by Dr Chris Williams who researches and teaches about the social, cultural and technical aspects of urban agriculture at the Burnley Campus of Melbourne University. Amongst his many interests he runs the Novel Crops Project which identifies less widely grown food plants for cultivation in Melbourne gardens, for example, sweet potato and taro...
We need to rapidly draw down carbon from the atmosphere, and radically reduce the amount we are pumping out at the same time. If that were achievable, what might the world look like? What would our lives be like in 2040? To explore this, we welcome back Seona Candy, research fellow with the Victorian Eco-innovation Lab at the University of Melbourne. VEIL and Seona are a part of the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) and their Visions and Pathways 2040 (VP2040)...
Bushy, Kate and Jed (all parents) and Adam (who's childless) take some time to consider the reasons or not for bringing kids into the world, a world threatened by resource depletion, climate change and other ecological crises.
Charles Massy gained a Bachelor of Science in the 70s before returning to the family farm near Cooma and the Snowy Mountains. He has been farming since, and in 2009 Charles Massy returned to ANU to complete a PhD in Human Ecology. In his latest book Call of the Reed Warbler he explores regenerative agriculture; an approach to farming that rebuilds topsoil, increases biodiversity, and importantly for Australia, resurrects eroded land and combats climate change. Charles joins us in the studio. Her...
On 11 November, Arts House will transform the North Melbourne Town Hall into an Emergency Relief Centre. The project is called Refuge , and we're joined by Arts House producer Tara Prowse to discuss this collaboration between artists, emergency services and the public. The theme of Refuge this year is heat waves, and to tell us how Melbourne and Australia will be effected by heat and other extreme weather events in the future we're joined by storm chaser and Melbourne University climate scientis...
We speak with Daryl Taylor, a survivor of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Kinglake. In 2009 when that enormous tragedy hit, Daryl already had over a decade's experience in community and organisational development roles. And since that day in February he has been involved on many informal and formal community based recovery and advocacy projects. His work has been acknowledged with 13 state and national awards and best practice commendations. And his experiences in the aftermath of the fires dee...
Steve Keen is professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He's credited with being one of the few economists who warned of the Global Financial Crisis and his books include 2001's Debunking Economics and his just published Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? He joins us from Amsterdam to discuss the incredible blindspot at the heart of mainstream economics, why Australia looks vulnerable to a financial crisis, and what individuals and ...
We chat with Katherine Wilson, author of Tinkering: Australians Reinvent DIY Culture . She says "home-based tinkering - the everyday commitment to material problem-solving - is emerging as a legitimate vocation, in ways we haven't seen since pre-industrial times." We talk about the joys of pulling things apart and putting things together.
Our guest this episode believes there is a third way which challenges the dichotomous view that when it comes to forestry, one ought to be either a conservationist or profiteer. Rowan Reid is a scientist and himself a farmer and forester. He's also been a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Uni for 20 years, and is the managing director of the not-for profit Australian Agroforestry Foundation . He won the 2001 Australian Eureka Prize for Excellence in Environmental Education for his farmer course: The ...
We speak with Craig Byatt and Liz Franzmann about their recent experience building a tiny house. Craig Byatt is a holistic architect and Liz has a background in sustainability and project management. We spoke about how the demand for tiny houses is on the rise despite the average size of the new Australian home being a whopping 231 square metres. We discussed the laws around tiny houses and the way that councils are playing a game of catch up in this area. We looked at examples of tiny houses be...
We're joined by eloquent US podcaster KMO, who has made hundreds of hours of fascinating radio through The C-Realm , which covers many of the same topics as Greening the Apocalypse, only he's been at it since 2006. KMO shares his personal journey from a well paid early Amazon employee -- a time when he was inspired by techno-utopian visions -- to an out-of-work divorcee feeling more attracted to doomsday scenarios; and we discuss what role psychology plays into our visions for the future. If you...
Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, broadcaster and activist on social, environmental and spiritual issues. His books include Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power described as "world changing" by George Monbiot, "life changing" by the Bishop of Liverpool and "truly mental" by Thom Yorke of Radiohead. His two most recent books are Spiritual Activism - Leadership as Service co-authored with Matt Carmichael and Poacher's Pilgrimage: an Island Journey. He joins us via the wires to talk a...
We talk with David Platt from Resilient Futures to remove the buzzword tag from 'disruption' and actually provide some insight to how changes and adaptation in people, community and technology have always been with us, and always will be, but we can develop strategies to work with the grain of change.
With Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steven Hawking all warning that future artificial intelligences of our own creation may pose existential threats to humanity, we delve into both the risks as well as utopian visions surrounding superintelligent AI as we are joined by Adam Ford of Science, Technology & the Future . We make a few references to Nick Bostrom's excellent book Superintelligence . Max Tegmark's new book Life 3.0 is a more approachable introduction....
The marvellous Prof Tim Flannery was once described by the Financial Times as akin to a cross between Charles Darwin and Indiana Jones for his pioneering mammalogy and paleontology field work. But he gave up this adventurous life to focus on climate change writing and campaigning. Tim drops into the studio and we discuss why, and talk about his new book (his second follow up to the highly influential The Weather Makers ): Sunlight and Seaweed: An Argument For How To Feed, Power, and Clean Up The...
We're joined by punk rock icon and vegan athlete John Joseph , author of Meat is For Pussies: A How-To-Guide for Dudes Who Want to Get Fit, Kick Ass, and Take Names . Before John was lead singer of The Cro Mags, he grew up on the streets and in foster homes. Got into gangs. He was drug mule. Stabbed. Shot. Went to jail. Went AWOL from the navy. Now at the age of 55 he's a plant powered triathlete, author and spiritual warrior. Sarah Coles interviewed him as John was in his tour van travelling th...
Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins describes the late historian and green economist David Fleming as "one of the most original, brilliant, urgently-needed, under-rated and ahead-of-his-time thinkers of the last 50 years." Fleming thought the globalised market economy would, in the not too distant future, begin to fail as it faces limits to growth from resource depletion, and said: "Localisation stands, at best, at the limits of practical possibility. But it has the decisive argument in its fav...
We talk all things booze making: gastonomic, hedonic and sustainabilic. Bushy's mate former professional beer maker and now avid home brewer (and data journalist) Marc Moncrief joins us.
