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.

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

Soil can change fast, but what about people? We're coming to you live from the 2026 Grounded Festival on the extraordinary Yan Yan Gurt West Farm, stewarded by the Stewart family, in the Otways of Victoria, Australia.

It’s early on day 1, the marquee Ironbark Tent is full, and we’re joined by global figurehead in agroecology, author of For The Love of Soil, and founder of the CREATE program with Integrity Soils, from Montana USA, Nicole Masters.

The session is billed ‘Soil Health Isn’t Always Sexy’. But we start by questioning the premise, and run from there, in conversation with me and those present, squarely in the moment, through a series of unplanned places and stories - bold, vulnerable and so instructive - woven together by Nicole’s unique, hard-won and globally influential wisdom. 

Nicole challenges the badge-of-honour culture of farming, and most other fields these days, at the outset: 'hard work takes no discipline'. From there we unpack the gap between what we say we want and what our days reveal, and why deep listening often creates more change than the best advice. 

We also zoom out to the bigger system. Nicole shares why collaboration beats doing it all yourself, how farmers and the rest of us can build profitable, creative business models that serve a growing desire for reconnection, and why peer pressure may be the most powerful agent of change. Along the way we talk somatics, self-regulation, succession stress, trust and intuition, AI as an unavoidable tool, and the quiet pull of ancestor work and lineage in a time that feels uncertain.

If you care about living a regenerative life, but you also want a life with joy and the space to enjoy it, this conversation is for you.

With thanks to the Grounded crew for this recording, at the biggest festival for better food, farming and ecological care ever held in this country.

Featuring listener voicemail at the end of the episode too.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 22 April 2026.

Title slide by Alan Benson.

See more photos on the episode web page.

And for paid subscribers, join us for the Solstice event with Fred Provenza (and co-host Katie Ross). 

Hear more from Nicole Masters (and Meagan Lannan) in ep164, Training the Wayfinders.

Hear Manchán Magan in ep290, How Old Stories Guide Us Through An Uncertain Future.

Hear Kristy Stewart in ep132, An Agroforestry Revolution.

Grounded was featured all over national media this year, including this article in The Monthly magazine by previous podcast guest Jo Chandler.

Music: 

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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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!

Birds chirping in the background of an interview might sound like a small detail, but a listener voicemail reminds us it can be the difference between a nice conversation and a felt sense of real regeneration. We’re back in the mailbag sharing the messages that have come in from subscribers, land workers, authors, career changers and long-time listeners, and what those reflections reveal about storytelling, trust, and hope in a complicated time.

We also sit with a sharp question raised by a listener after my conversation with holistic management founder Allan Savory: what happens when intuition gets dismissed as “a waste of time”? That tension between scientific legitimacy and other ways of knowing runs through regenerative agriculture, systemic change, and climate work, so it’s well worth exploring more. Along the way, we hear messages of praise for crystal-clear explanations of water cycle and climate dynamics, and musing why radiative forcing and water’s role in climate often fail to reach the wider public conversation.

Then I share special news: a first-time live online podcast audience event for paid subscribers on Patreon or Substack, featuring legendary behavioural ecologist Fred Provenza and his evolving Cosmic Dreaming talk, followed by conversation. If you’ve been looking for a deeper way to participate, this is it, and you can also send your own voicemail or text via the link in the show notes.

If the podcast has helped you think differently or act differently, please subscribe, share a favourite episode, and leave a rating and review so these stories travel further.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 1 June 2026.

Title slide: chasing fish with an old friend, Flat Top, back home (by Anthony James).  

Music: 

We’re Just Getting Started, by The Lonely Ramblers (from Artlist).

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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!

The Colorado River is treated much like plumbing on a map, but out on the ground it’s a living system with thresholds, memories, and consequences. I’m joined by award-winning photographer, filmmaker and adventurer, Pete McBride, whose latest book Witness to Water: One Photographer's Mission to Defend the Colorado River traces two decades of unexpected reporting and personal reckonings on the river he grew up with. We talk about the alarming reality of collapsing Rocky Mountain snowpack, rising heat, and a basin-wide standoff that pushes reservoirs like Lake Powell and Lake Mead toward 'power pool' and 'dead pool' levels right now.

From there, the story gets visceral. Pete describes walking into Glen Canyon as the water recedes, finding ghost forests, vanished rock art, and signs of life returning fast as habitat reappears. We dig into why dams create ecological surprises, including endangered fish dynamics and invasive species risks, and why water policy can’t be solved only in fluorescent-lit rooms. One of Pete’s simplest proposals lands hard: get the negotiators in a boat and have them be with the river together.

We also hear of Pete's extraordinary rare hike through the Grand Canyon, heartbreak on the Colorado River Delta, and later the healing legacy of Delta Dawn, where a pulse flow briefly had Pete and friends become the last people to paddle to the sea, and where ongoing targeted releases now rebuild pockets of riparian forest and bird habitat. Along the way we explore 'earned hope', Indigenous leadership and successes, uranium mining and the uncertainty around amazing groundwater dynamics, along with the quieter lesson running underneath it all: how silence and soundscapes shape what we notice, what we protect, and even what we become.

Pete's recent op-ed in Time Magazine, How to Save the Colorado River, might even have been called How to Save All Rivers. It certainly had us also talking about the parallels here in Australia with the Murray/Dungala River, along with our recent journey there.

Pete's short video update from the Delta.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 22 May 2026.

With thanks to Ed Roberson on the Mountain and Prairie podcast.

Music by Pete McBride.

Katie Ross and I talk about the Murray/Dungala River journey for ep302. And Katie talks a bigger water story in ep304.  

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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!

Clouds, soil moisture, and plant life are doing more climate work than most of us were ever taught and ignoring them leaves a huge gap in how we respond to warming. Here's the keynote from Dr. Katie Ross, at the recent Australian Water Association conference, that connects climate science to the living landscape, making the case that the climate “stands on two legs”: the familiar atmospheric story of greenhouse gases and a bottom-up ecological story driven by water, biology, and energy flows.

We dig into radiative forcing using a simple Earth energy budget, then follow what happens when solar energy meets healthy country: diverse plants photosynthesise and transpire, shifting heat into latent form, while microbes and plant compounds act as cloud condensation nuclei that help water vapor form thicker, lower, more reflective clouds. That cloud cover matters for cooling, for gentle local rain, and for clearer nighttime re-radiation windows that let heat escape. We also zoom out to the blue planet, where phytoplankton and ocean processes support cloud formation and climate balance.

Then the hard part: what changes when we clear forests, drain wetlands, straighten waterways, and degrade soils. Katie explains how altered land surfaces generate more heat, keep skies hazier, push storms toward extremes, and lock landscapes into runoff, erosion, drought, and fire. She closes with why carbon became the dominant climate narrative and what a more complete approach looks like: emissions cuts paired with regenerative agriculture, living soils, restored wetlands, and rebuilt small water cycles for real water security and local cooling.

Subscribe, share this with someone working on land or water, and leave a review so more people can find the missing half of the climate story.

Katie Ross PhD is a writer, Adjunct Fellow at UTS, and former CEO of Soils for Life.

Chapter markers & transcript.

You can watch Katie's slides attached to chapter markers as she speaks.

Recorded 25 February 2026.

Katie talks about our recent running of the Confluence river journey on the Murray/Dungala, in episode 302. 

The keynote before Katie's by Walbanga woman Sheryl Hedges is episode 303.

Music:

Southern Roots Boogie, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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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!

Water policy often gets framed as engineering, compliance, and competing demands. Then Sheryl Hedges steps up at the Australian Water Association conference and resets the baseline: for First Nations people, water is not a resource, it’s a living being that carries memory, knowledge, and songlines. That single shift turns “allocation” into responsibility, and it turns river health into a measure of cultural, ecological, and economic life across generations. 

Sheryl is a Walbanga woman leading the First Nations Water Branch within Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, and her keynote lands right in the hard numbers. First Nations people hold rights to around 40% of Australian land, yet control less than 0.2% of surface water entitlements in the Murray-Darling Basin. She names the structural roots of that gap, including the fiction of aqua nullius and the way water entitlements have been tied to land ownership and capital inside a multibillion-dollar water market. 

We walk through the Murray-Darling Basin Aboriginal Water Entitlements Program (AWEP), a $100 million initiative that is buying water entitlements while also building something more durable: governance that can hold and manage water over the long term, shaped through deep co-design with Basin nations. Sheryl explains why “ownership without governance is fragile”, what the “pace of trust” looks like in practice, and why embedding cultural flows and First Nations decision making is central to Australia’s water resilience, climate adaptation, and institutional integrity. 

If you want clearer thinking on First Nations water rights, water governance reform, and what real structural change requires from government, utilities, agriculture, finance, and allies, have a listen. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 25 February 2026.

Music:

Yellowstone Birds, by Yellowstone Sound Library (from Artlist).

The Tree Who Grew On Water, by Yoav Ilan (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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Support the show

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!

Back in March, Dr Katie Ross and I ran a canoe journey along the Murray/Dungala River, Australia’s longest, most regulated and mythologised river - to, as the bill put it, listen, witness, and create, in deep immersion and deep time. Could that help change the story of a magnificent but sorely ailing River and its communities? By changing our stories? By asking the River even? 

We headed to the confluence of the Murray Darling/Dungala Baaka Rivers, and called the journey Confluence. It filled in days. And come the Equinox, 16 of us climbed aboard and disembarked for a week together.

We’ve had many folk asking about it since. Including many who wanted to be there but couldn’t. So with thanks to you all for your interest, we decided to record our initial debrief for you. There’ll be more to share over time. But if you’re interested in how Confluence came about, was set up, and turned out in its first running, then here’s a starter. 

We also debrief on Katie’s broader tour of Australia, delivering related keynotes. And our chat culminates with some of the most extraordinary aspects of the river journey. 

This was recorded a little after Confluence, by the Yarra/Birrarung River in Melbourne/Naarm - the first to be recognised as a living entity in Australian law. Though you might be surprised to learn that recognition doesn’t include the water.

So we start with this monumental story of the river we sit by, and the broader movements it’s part of, then trace our path back to Confluence. 

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 17 April 2026.

Title image: Katie with Cynthia Mitchell up front (pic: Anthony James).

See more photos in this article & participant Sally Gillespie’s. 

Ep 218 - Katie at Aldo Leopold’s shack

Ep 97 - Alessandro Pelizzon

Ep 37 - Nora Bateson

Ep 195 – Dominique Hes

Ep 211 - Jeff Goebel

Music:

River, by Onyx Music (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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Support the show

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!

This bonus travelogue traces a walk through Concord, Massachusetts, as we step into the living neighbourhood behind some of the most influential American writers and ideas. 

Last week, we celebrated the 300th episode with a visit to the legendary site of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, where he wrote the famous book going by the pond’s name. The next day, we drifted into the town of Concord to visit the Thoreau family home, Henry David’s birthplace. 

Then, on our way to his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson’s place up the road, we came across another famous house - Louisa May Alcott’s family home. They were family friends of Emerson and Thoreau, and Louisa became another famous writer in town, as the author of Little Women. 

We didn’t have time for the tour, but to our great delight, the two elders who were running the tours, Beth and Anne, were out front and became fascinated by our tour of the country. We were then regaled with some of the awesome stories behind the stories, including of the hundreds of thousands of visitors coming from around the world, often with some surprising connections. They also had plenty to say on the spirit of places like this. They’re in no doubt of it.

After that, we made it to Emerson’s place. But first, the Thoreau’s, reflecting along the way on friendship, mentorship, and the journal practice Emerson urged Thoreau to keep. The thread tying it all together? Perhaps it's attention: noticing what a landscape is asking of us, and deciding how we want to live in response. 

If this lands for you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review with a line or question you’re taking with you. Or text or voicemail in via the link above.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 11 September 2024.

Title image: Thoreau's birthplace.

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

Music:

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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Support the show

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!

Walden Pond looks like the postcard version of New England, though the first thing I notice is the sound. A semi-trailer growls past, a train snaps by the lake, and a plane cuts the sky. That friction is exactly why I wanted to record this 300th-episode pilgrimage from one of the most iconic places in conservation history, where Henry David Thoreau lived for two years and turned detailed journals into Walden, the renowned masterpiece of nature writing, and cultural and self-examination.

I walk the shoreline, having started at the Walden Center, and follow the trail toward the replica cabin and on to its original site. Along the way I sit with what’s been restored and what’s still under pressure: crystal-clear water filtered through sands and soils, protected land surrounded by encroaching development, and the ongoing question of whether our technologies deliver more than they take. Standing at the stones and reading Thoreau’s “live deliberately” passage where it actually happened makes the idea feel a lot more visceral.

Thoreau’s civil disobedience writing also echoes through Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. And we learn the surprising history of Walden Pond’s stewardship, including an old amusement park that once sprung up alongside these waters. I end up alone at dusk, with night falling and moon rising. 

In celebration of the 300th episode, recorded the day after visiting Rachel Carson’s place in what became ep293. I've so looked forward to sharing this with you. The spirit of this place is really something. I hope you enjoy it.

With huge thanks for listening and supporting the podcast through its first 300 episodes!

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 10 September 2024.

Our visit to Aldo Leopold’s shack for ep218.

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

Music: Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

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Support the show

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!

Three West Australian farmers sit down for a sharp, honest Q&A that cuts through the glossy version of “regenerative agriculture” and gets into the real work: what happens when your new practice fails, your numbers get tight, and the supply chain refuses to reward better outcomes. Jake Ryan, Tom Mitchell, and Rod O’Bree share the mindset shifts that keep them moving, from treating mistakes as learnings to building the skill of self-diagnosis when there isn’t a standard playbook to follow.

Today we dust off one last gem from the Regenerative Agriculture Conference in Margaret River in late 2023. 

Jake Ryan is a global award-winning vegetable and livestock farmer from Three Ryans farm in Manjimup; Tom Mitchell is an award-winning market gardener from Worrolong Produce near Gin Gin; and Rod O’Bree is the bloke described to me as taking Natural Sequence Farming to the next level (to say nothing of his supply web work with distribution and retail companies) from Yanget farm just inland of Geraldton. 

They’d each given a 15 minute presentation, then came together on stage for this terrific Q&A.

For more from the conference:

Ep 298 – the first panel.

Ep 295 – the story I told to kick off the conference.

Ep 188 – the final panel.

Ep 187 – the last panel on day 1. 

Ep 180 – the opening night’s film Q&A.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 6 September 2023.

Title image: Tom, Rod, Jake & AJ (by Daniela Tommasi).

Come to Grounded Festival on 22-23 April 2026 (10% discount for paid subscribers).

Music:

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

Send a message

Support the show

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!

A barley grower sees his farm logo on a beer can prototype and gets emotional, not because it looks cool, but because it represents a long journey to a certified sustainable, low-emissions supply web that holds up under scrutiny. From the stage at the Regenerative Agriculture Conference in Margaret River back in 2023, we trace how this story runs from soil to sip and why “walk the walk” matters more than a pretty label. 

I recently dug into the archives and found some hidden gems from this conference. So episode 295 became the story I told as MC, to kick it off. And today, its first panel, featuring a couple of outstanding stories, and how they came to intertwine.

Before the panel, Senior WA Departmental Economist, Brad Plunkett, presented his research on Tolga farm in Kulin, in WA’s wheatbelt – its dryland production system, business set up, and significant ‘accidental’ carbon related outcomes. Fourth-generation farmer there, Brendon Savage, with his wife Gab, began changing the way they farm 20 years ago, having realised they needed to find ways to become sustainable. 

Then we heard from Mel Holland, who co-founded Rocky Ridge Brewing Co in 2017 with her partner Hamish, as a diversification of their fifth-generation family dairy farm in Jindong WA (near Busselton). I’m informed Mel was dubbed Rocky Ridge’s ‘Captain Planet’. Rocky Ridge’s aim? To make incredible beer using the best local produce, farmed in the best way, with the least environmental impact. Rocky Ridge is Australia’s first Certified Sustainable and Carbon Neutral Brewery.

Here, Mel and Brendan take a seat on stage to answer audience questions, and share the story of how they came to combine forces, to achieve these significant and emotional outcomes together.

If you like what you hear, subscribe, share this with a mate who loves good beer or good farming, and leave a review so more people can find the work behind the can.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 6 September 2023.

Title image: Brad, Mel, Brendan & AJ (by Daniela Tommasi).

See more photos on the episode web page.

Join us at Grounded Festival on 22-23 April 2026 (10% discount for paid subscribers).

Music:

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

Send a message

Support the show

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!