Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for The RegenNarration
Society & CultureHealth & FitnessEducation

The RegenNarration

Anthony James

Stories of the regeneration of the living world, not often on the news, often almost beyond belief. With award-winning host Anthony James. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home, and with some of the music they love.

Play
Open in
  • 24 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 59 min
  • English

Support the show

Goes straight to the publisher. podnod takes nothing.

Episodes 24

NewestOldestLongest
All4Unplayed4In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • S10 · E310
    June 30 · 54 min

    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 Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can. The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes 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 so much for your support!

    • Transcript
    • Chapters
  • S10 · E309
    June 23 · 1 hr 27 min

    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 Support the show Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can. The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes 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 so much for your support!

    • Transcript
    • Chapters
  • S10 · E308
    June 16 · 1 hr 3 min

    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 Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can. The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes 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 so much for your support!

    • Transcript
    • Chapters
  • S10 · E307
    June 9 · 1 hr 1 min

    Hard Work Takes No Discipline: Nicole Masters, Live at Grounded

    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. Send us a voicemail Support the show Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can. The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes 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 so much for your support!

    • Transcript
    • Chapters
Showing 21–24 of 24 episodes