We’re back at the Reconnection Festival for the last of three inter-related panel conversations, each building on the other. This one's on health, and features explosive revelations about a ‘Motor Neuron Disease alley’ linked to pollution and river degeneration in Australia’s Riverina agricultural district. Akin to the ‘cancer alley’ of the Mississippi River that transformed the life of our international guest, Zach Bush MD . Zach went on to found US not-for-profit Farmer’s Footprint , and has n...
Feb 19, 2024•59 min•Season 8Ep. 192
Welcome to the first of our mid-week specials. This is one of the experiments I want to try this year. Short grab releases featuring particular opportunities, stories or updates. There are just so many coming on, I hope this helps you to access them, and all of us to build on them. As ever, you’ll let me know what you think! First up then, a huge opportunity in the wheatbelt of WA. The Haggerty family have put their original ‘home’ property up for sale. This is where they developed the foundatio...
Feb 15, 2024•22 min•Season 8Ep. 191
Feast on our next conversation at the Reconnection Festival, the largest gathering of the regenerative movement in this country to date. This time, we’re talking food, for which the 800 people present were joined by a few more visionaries: Laura Dalrymple, founder of the extraordinary Feather and Bone in Sydney Matthew Evans, author, TV host & farmer at Fat Pig Farm in Tasmania, and Darren Doherty, founder of the globally renowned Regrarians out of Central Victoria. The general trajectory of...
Feb 12, 2024•58 min•Season 8Ep. 190
We head over to the eastern-most point of Australia this week, for the largest gathering of the regenerative movement in this country to date. Join us at the Reconnection Festival, staged by Farmer’s Footprint Australia in November last year. We sit with a panel of three visionary women, for a conversation on culture that laid a foundation for everything that followed. Two of our panellists are previous podcast guests: Dr Amanda Cahill, CEO and founder of The Next Economy , and Jade Miles, CEO o...
Feb 05, 2024•54 min•Season 8Ep. 189
Join us at the grand finale of the 2023 Regenerative Agriculture Conference in Margaret River WA. Following on from last week, today we’re with another all-star panel. And again, we’ve no predetermined agenda, but to reflect on what had gone before, and what might come next. Dr Judi Earl is a national treasure, having conducted the first studies describing the benefits to pasture from planned grazing. She has been a Holistic Management educator since 2002, and showcases the capacity of grazing a...
Jan 29, 2024•50 min•Season 8Ep. 188
Welcome to the new year. And welcome to a new world, where soil renews and pastures flourish, where every bite of food embodies a philosophy of renewal. The Regenerative Era blooms, and with it, a transformative approach to our landscapes and the very sustenance of life. Join us on a journey to Margaret River, where the 2023 Regenerative Agriculture Conference ignited a beacon of hope and inspiration with a turnout of passionate souls exceeding 300. This episode is your exclusive pass to the hea...
Jan 22, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 8Ep. 187
Welcome to the customary package of highlights from another brilliant array of guests throughout 2023, accompanied by some of the music and sounds of Country heard along the way. Our guests were farmers, artists, First Nations, entrepreneurs, investors, former miners, migrants, health professionals, writers, journalists, facilitators, producers, consultants, researchers, diplomats, political economists, permaculturalists, market gardeners, chefs and more; some famous, many not, of all ages, from...
Dec 20, 2023•46 min
Welcome to a very special final episode for 2023. After seven years of this podcast, covering many inspiring stories, there’s clearly no mystery as to how we go about regeneration. So why is the macro story, if you like, the big picture - extinctions, emissions, inequality, health - still going the wrong way? Is there something we’re missing, for all our regenerative efforts? Something that doesn’t just help a few of us on regenerative trajectories, but all of us? Something that changes what hap...
Dec 12, 2023•1 hr 29 min
D’harawal man Gregory Andrews is the Former Ambassador and first Threatened Species Commissioner of Australia who went on Climate Hunger Strike outside Australia’s federal parliament for, as he put it, my kids and country. On the 16th day, he was hospitalised. And while Gregory began his recovery, a community vigil of sorts kicked in, with people taking Gregory’s place, fasting for a day each. And that’s just a hint of some of the extraordinary insight and power sparked by Gregory’s experience -...
Dec 05, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Earlier this year, Associate Professor in Law, Alessandro Pelizzon, was on the podcast talking about some of the latest global paradigm shifting developments in our legal systems. A couple of weeks ago, there was another such development. The EU is going to criminalise severe environmental harms ‘comparable to ecocide’. And related to that, it’s also broaching post-growth economies. All part of broader shifts in deciding what we value most, and how our systems can best change to reflect that. Wi...
Nov 30, 2023•45 min
Today is a special release ahead of this week’s scheduled episode. It was recorded with a full house of over 400 people in the main theatre at Federation Square in Melbourne, for the memorial service of my late great mate and mentor, and legend in systems thinking – and practice – in this country, Professor Frank Fisher. Mine was a humble opener for a few beautiful eulogies offered on the day. Today would be, or is, Frank’s 80th birthday. I’ve commemorated the occasion in recent years with episo...
Nov 27, 2023•13 min
Brooke Purvis is a podcast listener who reached out after hearing the most recent episode with Chris Henggeler from Kachana Station last month. She wondered if she could help with the ‘donkey situation’ there. It turns out she’s co-founded something called the Last Stop Donkey Program, out of Singleton in the Hunter Valley of NSW. Brooke and husband Heath say they saw many people looking to purchase donkeys in an attempt to combat growing stock losses from dingo attacks, as donkeys are renowned ...
Nov 21, 2023•45 min
This is an excerpt of one of the most pivotal conversations on the podcast this year. So many conversations since, and attempts to navigate the paradigm change talked about here, have come back to this launch event, and the stories expressed in it. Having just returned from the Re:Connection Festival in the northern rivers, and a little tour around it, I’ll have more out on the podcast soon about some of this trailblazing work going on. This conversation marked the launch of a major report and p...
Nov 16, 2023•43 min
Rachel Ward is a famed actress, film-maker and now farmer. Jade Miles is the CEO of Sustainable Table, author of Futuresteading, and steward of the incredible Black Barn Farm. We shared this conversation with a live audience after a screening of Rachel’s brilliant documentary, Rachel’s Farm. It was a curtain raiser to the Regenerative Agriculture Conference in Margaret River WA, and the penultimate event of Rachel’s film tour of 30 or so locations around the country. That lent a certain perspect...
Nov 07, 2023•49 min
It’s all go here now for the upcoming RE:CONNECTION Festival. But there are other reasons for this excerpt today. So many of my conversations these days, including after the Voice Referendum here in Australia, for example, come back to this part of episode 170 with Tim Hollo, author of ‘Living Democracy: An ecological manifesto for the end of the world as we know it’. And particularly the part where he said: “And I asked Amanda if there was a secret ingredient that sits behind it [the incredible...
Nov 01, 2023•30 min
Welcome to part two of Coming to a Head in the Kimberley, featuring one of the great stories of regeneration, and one of the most spectacular regions in the world, at a time when both are acutely on the line. Join us back at Kachana Station in the East Kimberley, with award-winning regenerative pastoralist Chris Henggeler. We pick up the conversation from part one here, on the latest with the donkey situation. Since we last visited Kachana, the state department that ordered the donkeys at Kachan...
Oct 24, 2023•50 min
Chris Henggeler and his family manage Kachana Station in the East Kimberley, only accessible by foot or air. They took responsibility for this desertified and abandoned country, and have achieved some incredible regeneration, culminating last year in a State Soil Health Champion award. Yet with still vast lands desertifying around them, and so much opportunity to build on models like Kachana, we recorded an episode out there two years ago titled Wanted Land Doctors. Now the second most popular e...
Oct 18, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Heidi Mippy is a Noongar and Thiin-Mah Warriyangka woman, and a pioneer in Aboriginal education support and community development. For over 25 years, Heidi’s been leading and sharing in many brilliant success stories, with renowned integrity, smarts and spirit. Here, Heidi joins Anthony in the lead up to Australia’s national referendum on an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament this weekend, with no predetermined agenda, clear cut positions, or knowledge of what each other was thinking, going in. We h...
Oct 10, 2023•56 min
Welcome back to Fitzroy Crossing. Jimmy Dillon Andrews is a highly respected Bunuba elder and founder of Bungoolee Tours, nationally renowned for the cultural experiences it guides people through. These include journeys deep beneath the limestone of the Napier Range into Tunnel Creek, and through the heart of the incredible Windjana Gorge, carved from a 35O million year old Devonian Reef. The spiritual significance of these places to the Bunuba people is immense, having tended all this for at le...
Oct 04, 2023•56 min
Welcome to a very special episode, months in the making. Natalie Davey was last on the podcast nearly 2 years ago. It’s still the sixth most popular episode. Natalie is a community leader from Fitzroy Crossing, with Bunuba-Walmajarri, English and Scottish heritage. She’s a Traditional Custodian of the magnificent Martuwarra Fitzroy River. She’s also a broadcaster with the local Wangki radio, an artist, educator, and former ranger. She was the first Indigenous Chair, too, of highly respected not-...
Sep 27, 2023•1 hr 25 min
A very special episode from flood-ravaged Fitzroy Crossing, with Traditional Custodian of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River, Natalie Davey, has been weeks in the making and is almost finished. Stay tuned for that next week! Today is an excerpt of episode 156 featuring the last 25 minutes or so with globally renowned writer, educator and consultant, Daniel Christian Wahl, at a very sensitive time in his life. Our conversation was ostensibly winding up, but some deep personal reflections on life, langu...
Sep 20, 2023•30 min
What a week at the regenerative agriculture conference in Margaret River. Fair to say we’re still buzzing, and recovering. More on that later. Normal podcasting will resume next week, but this week has actually been lined up for a while – in anticipation of that recovery, and the release of a very special book. Carol Sanford’s new – and sadly last – book is out this week. It’s called No More Gold Stars: Regenerating Capacity to Think for Ourselves. You might remember her talking about it back at...
Sep 12, 2023•24 min
We’ve landed in Margaret River, ahead of its major regenerative agriculture conference, with a live Q&A screening of Rachel’s Farm raising the curtain tonight. Anthony will be hosting director Rachel Ward, in conversation with another previous guest on the podcast, Jade Miles . In the film, Rachel raises the rest of the picture of regeneration – regenerating supply chains. And this is where her daughter Matilda (featuring profoundly in the film also), and her partner Scott Gooding, have take...
Sep 05, 2023•29 min
We’re now heading south from the Kimberley towards Margaret River for the regenerative agriculture conference next week. One brilliant couple who’ll be there, and who appear in the film Rachel’s Farm being shown on the eve of the conference, is Kaycee Simuong and Tom Macindoe. This is an excerpt of episode 167 featuring the last 25 minutes or so of our conversation, recorded after visiting Rachel, up the Valley at their 400 acre farm of forest and grassland regeneration, with extraordinary marke...
Aug 28, 2023•29 min
We’re back at Kachana Station this week, the site of the second most listened to episode on this podcast . And we've just recorded an update from here that will be out soon. But as recent guest Rachel Ward makes her way around the country, screening her new film and speaking with communities, news has arrived she’ll be doing likewise ahead of the major regenerative agriculture conference in Margaret River WA in a couple of weeks now. Episode 168 featured two chapters in effect – the first was wi...
Aug 23, 2023•54 min
We’ve been recording in Fitzroy Crossing this week, and reflecting on the blessing of hearing from a number of elders here in the Kimberley. This includes one of the recordings from Fitzroy which will be out soon. And today, as we prepare to leave this permaculture paradise of recent guest, Wendy Albert, and head back to Kachana Station, it brought to mind another permaculture legend who cut her teeth here in the Kimberley – as a 15 year old jillaroo back in the ‘50s. This is an excerpt of episo...
Aug 14, 2023•28 min
There was some big news last week. The Farmer’s Footprint Australia team announced they’ll be staging a major festival in November. It will feature the return to these shores of Zach Bush, with Charles Eisenstein beaming in online, alongside a host of brilliant Australian speakers and artists. To get us in the mood, keep the connections alive from last year’s tour, and just in case you missed it, here’s an excerpt of the last 25 minutes or so of the panel conversation that brought the house down...
Aug 07, 2023•28 min
Ten years ago now, award-winning writer and journalist, Judith Schwartz wrote the book ‘Cows Save the Planet: and Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth'. Then came 'Water In Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World'. And then, a few years ago, in an extraordinary global tour of earth repair, came 'The Reindeer Chronicles: and Other Inspiring Stories of Working With Nature to Heal the Earth'. That award-winning book featured stories from Norway, Spain, Hawai’i, New Mexico, the Mi...
Aug 01, 2023•1 hr 23 min
Join us on an insightful journey with Kimberley legend Wendy Albert, a woman who's lived an extraordinary life, challenging the status quo and advocating for sustainable living. From her early years growing up on a farm, to joining Mother Teresa's sisterhood, Wendy's experiences have shaped her into a fierce advocate for food security and sustainable agriculture in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and beyond. Wendy is the owner/manager of Kimberley Cottages, and Windjana Wellness and S...
Jul 25, 2023•1 hr 26 min
Welcome to a new series of episodes from the Kimberley, in far north Western Australia. First up, prepare for a transformative journey as we're joined by Manchán Magan, the acclaimed Irish travel writer, documentary maker, radio producer, theatre performer, builder of the first straw-bale house in Ireland, regenerator of the 10 acre block it stands on, and best-selling author. Manchán’s books include ‘32 Words for Field: Lost words of the Irish landscape’, which is said to have begun as a cult h...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 25 min
