• 1 hour 6 minutes
    The Purpose Pledge: Changing Capitalism As We Know it, with Dr Bronner’s Les Szabo

    ‘Dr. Bronner’s Has a Plan to Change Capitalism as We Know It.’ That’s the headline that Inc. Magazine ran with on the recent launch of the Purpose Pledge. Describing it as ‘a new gold standard of social entrepreneurship,’ the article led off with this: ‘The B Corp and the billionaires’ Giving Pledge are broken—so says the team at Dr. Bronner’s.’ Well, it might be a bit more nuanced than that, but Bronner’s has discontinued its B-Corp certification. 

    I spoke with CEO, David Bronner, at the company’s HQ in California a couple of years ago, for episode 207, about the incredible story of this top-selling brand of natural soaps, body care and food products. Since David became CEO in 1998, the company has grown from $4 million in revenue to $250 million, and all while continuing to change so much about the systems and stories we live by.

    Back then, this podcast happened to be the first to feature the breaking news that the Purpose Pledge was readying for launch. That launch happened earlier this year. And today, more breaking news, as another four companies have just signed on.

    The key architect behind the Pledge, and its Executive Director, is Les Szabo. He’s the quietly spoken Chief Strategy and Impact Officer at Dr. Bronner's, described to me as having flown under the radar for a long time. Part of the family behind the family in a way, as his wife is also a senior long-term executive at the company. And how they met and came to be where they are at Bronner’s, and with Les now launching the Pledge (and related Fund), is one enormous, heart-rending, death-defying, instructive, hopeful and crazily serendipitous story, that in large parts I sense hasn’t been shared before. 

    If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, you can navigate via the chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 13 August 2026.

    Les’s blog on the Dr Bronner’s site. 

    My conversation with David Bronner back in episode 207, from May 2024. 

    And with the couple behind Food Connect in Brisbane, who have used the term ‘careholder’ since their successful crowd-funded equity raise, which we first talked about for episode 28, Transforming Food, Finance & Society.

    Episode 227 featured Joel Caldwell talking about his award-winning short film The Green Buffalo.

    For a short story about the uncanny moment that took place after this conversation, that's in my latest Substack piece.  

    Music: 

    Honey Mustard, by Randy Sharp (from Artlist).

    Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    18 August 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 1 hour 39 minutes
    How a Tropical Farmer Helped Build A Global Regeneration Network, with André Leu

    André Leu is co-founder and Director of Regeneration International. That’s the world's largest network geared towards the transition to regenerative food, farming and land management, for the purpose of restoring climate stability, ending world hunger and rebuilding social, ecological and economic systems. It includes over 740 organisations across more than 80 countries, and humble individual members like your host, and is in the midst of exponential growth in interest. 

    I catch up with André as he sits on the deck at his pioneering tropical fruit farm in the Daintree of far north Queensland. I’m eager to chat about his 50 years as a farmer, educator, author, rock musician and movement builder.

    We start with the regenerated farm, now lush, green and productive, and he says, ‘just getting better and better’. How’s that for a narrative we could do with hearing more of right now? We go on to chat about his coming of age in the heart of the Aboriginal land rights movement, and the dawn of rock’n’roll.

    We hear stories of legends, and a love story too, with his wife of almost 50 years. More well-known than him too, he says. And why did this pioneering organic farmer who’s led a movement for organics and regeneration for decades ditch his organic certification? And is Gina Rinehart really the world’s biggest organic farmer? 

    So much to talk about. So settle in with us, on André’s veranda, with the sound of the trees in the tropical breeze. 

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 6 August 2026.

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

    Music: 

    Rowdy, by The Lonely Ramblers (from Artlist).

    Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    11 August 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 4 minutes 23 seconds
    Trailer

    Welcome to the new trailer for the podcast! Hit play, share it with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    This is The RegenNarration podcast — conversations with the people changing the systems and stories we live by, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet.

    Music (sourced from Artlist):

    The Lonely Ramblers - Rowdy - Instrumental version 

    Mark Grundhoefer - Barefoot 

    Yarin Primak - Galaxy Groove 

    Yehezkel Raz - Flight of the Inner Bird 

    Patrick Sebag - Hours - Instrumental version

    And Regeneration, by friend of the podcast, Amelia Barden.

    Thanks for listening!

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    10 August 2026, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 8 minutes
    Regenerative Fashion, Witch Hunts & Re-Enchantment, with Lucianne Tonti

    How does a fashion editor cotton onto regenerative agriculture, and then find that thread leads her back to the witch hunts? Lucianne Tonti is a prominent journalist, author and consultant specialising in regenerative fashion systems. Her first book was duly called Sundressed: Natural fibres and the future of fashion. That’s now being developed into a docuseries.

    Lucianne’s subsequent epic tale is told in her new book, Good Witch: In Search of Our Lost Feminine Power, published by Summit Books. It’s described as ‘A paradigm-shifting book that asks what the world might be like if divine feminine power had never been devalued. And shows us how it is being reclaimed.’

    This is the book I wish I read as a young bloke in my teens. I hope both women and men get hold of it in numbers. Lucianne has been on some incredible journeys in the last half dozen years, including visiting many guests on this podcast. But her last couple of years have really dug back into the roots of our struggles, and possibilities. And it makes sense of so much. From gender relations, to health epidemics, to land, politics, economies and so much more.

    More on the book:

    Today, we can still feel the legacy of the witch hunts: In the way the natural world has been degraded. In the way humans have become disengaged from the things that make us truly happy. A campaign of disenchantment has sought to disconnect us from the earth – and from each other.

    But enchantment was never truly lost. Here, Tonti shows us how a return to feminine power is what the world desperately needs now, more than ever.

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 30 July 2026.

    Title image of Lucianne by Anne Peeters.

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

    Lucianne’s Substack, including dispatches from her journeys accompanied by photos.

    Her series of book launch events

    Her write up of her visit to the Haggerty farm last year for Elle Australia, Follow the Flock.

    Music: 

    Silhouettes, by Muted (from Artlist).

    Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    4 August 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 1 hour 24 minutes
    Blue Health, Big Waves & Deep Change, with Easkey Britton

    Easkey Britton is a pioneering marine sociologist, writer and surfer. She has continued her family legacy in Ireland, becoming a legendary surfer in her own right – from being the only kid surfing in her area, to later becoming a 5x national champion and the first woman to surf the huge wave near Mullaghmore, to inspiring and guiding more women and girls into the sport, even where you might least expect it (think Iran - where it was her life that was transformed). 

    For her, though, it’s always been much more than a sport. Her PhD, best-selling books and immersive ocean retreats are all about our deeper connections with water, and its power to revive old stories, places and kinships, that heal and inspire. 

    And for Easkey, it all turned on a decision her grandmother made. And an impromptu moment of crazy, or brave, or maybe flow state. With some key mentor presences along the way, including one we share. So that's where we start.

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 17 July 2026.

    Easkey riding a giant wave in her 2014 Ride of the Year Entry.

    You can listen to my conversation with the late Manchán Magan (that I still hear from listeners about) in episode 173 (or the tribute from the start of this year, which includes the last 25 minutes or so from that original episode, in episode 290). And with Tyson Yunkaporta in episode 70.

    Music: 

    Ocean sounds by Charles Rose.

    Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

    If this conversation sparks something, subscribe, share it, and leave a review so more people can find the show. Thanks for listening!

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

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    28 July 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 1 hour 21 minutes
    Meeting The River: A New Award-Winning Film, with Mara Tasker

    Mara Tasker is the director of the new award-winning documentary The River. It follows the people living inside the Colorado River Basin, from farmers and ranchers to suburban families, tribal communities, and the seven state negotiators trying to rewrite the rules of a river that no longer matches the paperwork. What starts as a personal admission of “I didn’t really know the river I depended on” becomes a map for charting how we might be able to breathe life back into the Colorado, and really, rivers everywhere.  

    Mara’s story, too, is worth the telling – with no straight lines, from rabble rousing school girl, to gutsy cold calling young creative, with a passion for engaging with all kinds of people, and a river running through it all. Plenty of uncanny laughs run through this conversation too.

    I was introduced to Mara by Melissa Grumhaus, who was an Executive Producer on the incredible documentary film Bring Them Home, about the Blackfeet Nation's effort to restore wild buffalo herds. You might remember her from episode 278 in Denver last year. And this time, she’s part of the production team alongside Aussie company Songbird Studios. I noted recent popular podcast guest, Pete McBride, was also in the credits. So it was clear how good and meaningful this film was going to be. 

    If you value what you hear, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and of course head to the film’s website. Please share this podcast too.

    Featuring music from the film’s soundtrack: The Story of a River, and Eric’s Grasses, by Mark Crawford.

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 26 June 2026.

    Host a community screening of The River.

    And a community screening of Bring Them Home.

    You can hear the podcasts with Liz Carlisle for ep309 (with her beautiful music), Pete McBride for ep305 (with his live mandolin), Jeff Goebel for, most recently on-location in New Mexico, ep211, and Judith Schwartz for ep175, all among my very favourites. 

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    21 July 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 1 hour 30 minutes
    Whatever It Is, Floor It: Linley Dixon on Real Organic, Regen Threats & Becoming Irresistible

    Linley Dixon is co-host of The Real Organic Podcast, the weekly Anthem Award-winning ‘Best Sustainability, Environment and Climate Podcast’, recently also named one of the ‘best climate podcasts’ by Earth.org. That pod is produced by The Real Organic Project, that Linley co-directs with Vermont organic farmer Dave Chapman, a farmer-led movement, and add-on food label, dedicated to preserving the integrity of organic food. 

    Right now, Linley sees the same patterns that have beset organics, coming for the regenerative movement. And in response to a challenge from Paul Hawken, and inspiration from so many pioneers, including some Aussies, Linley argues it’s time to join forces. 

    Linley is a power of knowledge and experience in all this, with an incredible story to tell. Having started with nothing, her family did the hard yards and made a go of farming, but in the face of industrialised headwinds almost had to give it up, before a legacy moment occurred. But then, a horror contamination event. It was gutting. And it transformed Linley’s life. Along with so many others now, in turn.

    Perhaps inevitably, as a fellow podcaster, Linley interviews me at times here too! So it’s a kind of 2-in-1. We compare all sorts of notes, including of our respective journeys across the States and Australia, speaking to people of all kinds, politics and other beliefs. Again, you guessed it, painting a picture you don’t commonly see on the TV, and mapping out the successful stuff we can build on. And again, it all culminates in an incredible exchange stemming from the music question! Before we go out with a subscriber voicemail.

    This conversation was recorded just before the article I published on Substack last week on Trump’s Executive Order apparently advancing regenerative farming, said to be in part some MAHA triage. But we explore all its contexts here, including MAHA, its promise, and signs of divergence from Trump. 

    We also look for what actually works: alliances across labels, cooperative models, food-as-medicine programs, directories and online marketplaces that connect eaters directly to trustworthy farms, and the cultural fuel it takes to keep pushing when the system is designed for consolidation. 

    So ultimately, this episode feels perfectly timed this week. It really felt like we’d settled in on the porch at the farm too. I hope you enjoy the Summer evening hang with us.

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 2 July 2026.

    If you care about regenerative farming, organic integrity, soil biodiversity, pesticide contamination, and building a food system that earns trust, this one is for you. Subscribe, share it with a friend who buys groceries, and leave a review with the most important standard you think “regenerative” should require.

    You can hear our visit to Churchtown Dairy, with Judith Schwartz and company, in episode 221: Restoring Dairy Farming with Family, Food & Festival. And the first listener mailbag went out from there too, in ep 219.

    And the Grounded Festival podcast that features the session on Food as Medicine, with Steven Chen MD, and me hosting, is here.

    Music: 

    Organic Reflections, by Roie Shpigler (sourced from Artlist).

    Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    14 July 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 1 hour 6 minutes
    If Rewilding Is Colonised, How to Remake Wilderness? With Cal Flyn

    ‘A brilliant exploration of wildness in both nature and humankind.’ That's what Alice Winn said about the new book by Cal Flyn. Cal is an award-winning writer from the Highlands of Scotland, and the book is called The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness

    A five-year odyssey she sometimes thought would kill her, Cal travelled the world exploring the concept of wilderness as it ‘shifted from a spiritual notion to an aesthetic and later to an (increasingly controversial) conservation ideal.’ Which led to a critical question, as we go about things like rewilding and the 30 by 30 conservation target, how do we decolonise that ideal, while not losing all it has gained? 

    Then, having been introduced to the new book, I got even more excited looking over Cal’s back catalogue. Her previous book was the award-winning best-seller, Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape. What a collection of stories that was too. And out of both books, Cal says ‘coming out hopeful was a surprise to me.’

    But we start with her first book, being on her harrowing connection with Australia. Thicker Than Water emerged as she traced the path of a distant relative who became fêted as a pioneer hero in Australia, but has more recently been implicated as ringleader of a number of brutal massacres of the Gunai Aboriginal people.

    We talk about all this, the telling connections across some of her most extraordinary encounters, and what Cal’s found in herself, the rest of us, and the rest of nature, that continues to surprise and inspire.

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 4 June 2026.

    Title image of Cal sourced from The Guardian.

    Music: 

    Scotland Mountains, by Angel Salazar (from Artlist).

    Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

    Subscribe for more conversations on rethinking conservation, decolonising wilderness, and building a future where nature and culture can both thrive, and share the episode and leave a review so more people can find it.

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    7 July 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 54 minutes 15 seconds
    The Food The World Forgot: Helianti Hilman live at Grounded

    A plant that gives you salt and sugar. A forest “supermarket without the bills.” And a business model that treats farmers, foragers, and fishers like artists with a world stage, not beneficiaries waiting for help. We’re live at the 2026 Grounded Festival in the Otways with Helianti Hilman, founder of Javara, following her mission to help revive Indonesia’s rich food culture and turn food biodiversity into dignified livelihoods.

    We talk terroir across an archipelago of landscapes and 1,300 ethnic groups, and what traditional knowledge still holds: slow cooking methods that protect nutrition, hyper-local souring agents and herbs, and delicious ingredients that serve many different functions. Helianti shares vivid examples, from lower-sodium salt in Papua to spice diversity that challenges what “normal” flavors even mean, plus the practical reality of mapping edible ecosystems without damaging them.

    Then we get into the reeds in conversation: commercialisation without extraction. Helianti explains why rarity matters more than volume, how Javara develops processing methods that don’t rely on electricity, and how ancient packaging with no plastic, the right narrative, and traceability help indigenous foods compete on quality instead of pity. We also unpack her “artist manager” approach, the Food Artisan School for rural women and youth, cooperative structures for shared infrastructure and financing, and what hotels chasing ESG standards actually need from local supply chains.

    We close with questions on sustainability, access, and intellectual property, including the limits of protecting traditional knowledge through trademarks and geographical indication, and why “food is medicine” isn’t a trend but a daily practice embedded in spices, herbs, and low-glycemic palm sugars. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a friend, and leave a rating or review so more people can find the work.

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 22 April 2026.

    Title image by Alan Benson.

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

    Nicole Masters, live in conversation at Grounded for episode 307.

    Liz Carlisle on the living ancient roots of regeneration and its healing ground for episode 309 last week.

    Music: 

    Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

    Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    30 June 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 1 hour 27 minutes
    This Is Ancestor Work: Liz Carlisle on Healing Grounds, Living Roots & Girl Drumming

    This is somewhat of a momentous occasion. Liz Carlisle wrote a book called Healing Grounds a few years ago, and a listener brought it to my attention. Just as it was for Liz, it’s been really significant for me. Initially setting out to test regenerative agriculture’s claims on carbon and climate restoration, a bigger picture opened up. And a line from the last page has stayed with me since – ‘this is ancestor work’. Longer term listeners will have heard me recall it a bit on this podcast. It even came up in the recent chat with Nicole Masters at Grounded Festival, such is its synergy with where so many others seem to be finding themselves. And it's our starting point here. 

    Liz also has a new book out, a compilation with dozens of amazing stories and contributors, co-edited with Aubrey Streit Krug of The Land Institute. It’s called Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods (global release here). While Healing Grounds is also coming out in paperback, with a new foreword. 

    These are works so full of everything we need and could benefit from more right now. Successes, joys and wisdom, transcending impasses, traumas and would-be divides.

    And it’s all somewhat presciently evidenced in the songs Liz wrote and performed as a young touring musician, some of which she kindly shares with us here. That was before that life led her to this one, via a job with farmer and new Senator at the time, Jon Tester. 

    Her work now also includes being an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming to a growing, ready and bold student cohort of thousands. 

    Here Liz shares her Dust Bowl lineage, the pain of disconnection from farming, and the way each layer of understanding gets deeper than tools or inputs. Regeneration, she argues, is tied to Indigenous stewardship and to food traditions carried through diaspora, and it only works at the scale of the climate crisis if it is equitable for people as well as healthy for soil. That takes us into the hard, practical questions: land ownership, short leases, monocultures, and the policy machinery that keeps farmers locked into systems that are brittle under climate change and biodiversity loss. 

    We also talk about what’s possible and happening right now, in that context. We talk land trusts, commons-based models, cultural access agreements, and Indigenous land return, plus why perennials matter so much for climate resilience and soil carbon stability. Living Roots brings the concept to life through stories of serviceberries, agroforestry, prairie strips in the Midwest, and the remembering of perennial grains that reframes “innovation” as cultural memory. 

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 17 June 2026. 

    Music: Feels Like Home, The Water Is Wide, and Montana, all by Liz Carlisle.

    Send us a voicemail

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    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    23 June 2026, 8:00 pm
  • 1 hour 3 minutes
    Album of the Year: Country's Calling, with Cathy Briant & Charles Jenkins

    What happens when a regenerative farmer decides the land deserves a soundtrack? Cathy Briant joins us alongside Australian music legend Charles Jenkins (of Icecream Hands and other fame) to tell the story behind Country’s Calling, the album launched at the recent Grounded Festival.

    Country's Calling stemmed from the trials in Cathy's journey to becoming a regenerative farmer in Victoria’s Gippsland region. During a particularly difficult time in her life, Cathy discovered how deeply music could help. So she found herself asking: what if music could help us listen to the land?

    She then teamed up with Charles, alongside fellow Oz music legend Douglas Lee Robertson, and young Indigenous talent Casii Williams, and Country’s Calling was the result. It’s wonderful, and we hear plenty of it in this rollicking ride of emotion, groove and inspiration. 

    It begins with some of Cathy's family history and farming pressure: rising costs, stressed relationships, sleepless nights and the deep ache of watching land and livelihoods pushed to the edge. Then Cathy shares how she became a lyricist out of nowhere, by letting the land lead. While Charles explores the craft of making it all work together in great songs. 

    Along the way we talk and listen to some favourite tracks like “Song For A Cow,” “Bare Ground,” “Best Foot Forward” and “My Name Is Soil, Don’t Call Me Dirt,” including why naming something can be the start of respect and relationship. 

    We also zoom out to the bigger picture: the parallels between farmers and musicians trying to stay viable, the role of community, and why we back Bandcamp as a direct way to support artists. A portion of sales also goes to the Bionutrient Food Association, connecting soil microbial diversity to nutrient density and human health. 

    If you love thoughtful songwriting, regenerative farming, thriving soil biology and real world hope, subscribe, share this one with a friend, and leave a review so more people find it. Thank you!

    Chapter markers & transcript.

    Recorded 11 June 2026.

    Title image of Cathy by Alan Benson at Grounded Festival 2026, and of Charles off his website.

    Accompanying the introduction to this episode is Around the Island – Night Ambience, SFX by Charles Rose (from Artlist).

    You can hear that episode with Dan Kittredge and Matthew Evans in ep. 283, A Superhuman Finale to Grounded Festival WA: The Nutrient Density Conundrum.

    Send us a voicemail

    Support the show

    Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available. 

    The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

    You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

    I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

    16 June 2026, 8:00 pm
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