The RegenNarration

Anthony James
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

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.

  1. 2d ago

    A Farmer-Led Movement Goes National, with Michael Gooden

    This week kicks off a hybrid episode of sorts. First up today, a big launch as a farmer-led movement goes national here in Australia. Which of course isn’t just news for them, but for all of us who eat food, drink water and generally thrive of healthy living systems.  So I speak with the President of Farmers Helping Farmers, and a farmer himself at Old Man Creek, Michael Gooden, about the bold launch, its daring conference, the big vision, and of course the huge heart behind it all. There’s plenty of emotion and guts in this one, spurring a compelling vision.  I’ve been looking forward to speaking to Goodo on the podcast for ages. He introduced himself to me with a phone call and a paid subscription to the podcast five years ago now. We’ve since become good friends, and our Confluence river journey back in March wouldn’t have been the same without him and his incredible food straight off the farm.  We catch him at home today, on the back of all the recent action. And next week, we catch him on the banks of the Murray River. But more on that then. For now, join us for a cuppa in the kitchen. More shout outs and listener mail feature at the end. If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, essentially viewing a table of contents, you can navigate via the chapter markers & transcript. Recorded 10 September 2026. Title image: Goodo is on the left, with the speakers at the recent launch and conference of Farmers Helping Farmers (supplied). See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below. For the conversation with Jonathan Lundgren, head to last week’s episode 319, You Want Evidence for Regen Ag? Here It Is (where you’ll also find a highlight excerpt, What If More Life On Farms Solves Everything?). Last week’s latest on the situation at Kachana Station, as a bid is launched to save the donkeys. Thanks to everyone who has responded with your support. Music:  Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist). Regeneration, by Amelia Barden. If this conversation sparks something, share it with a farmer or food-lover in your life, subscribe so you don’t miss the riverside follow-up, and leave a review to help more people find the show. What part of farming’s future do you most want to see changed next? 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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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 Farmer-Led Movement Goes National, with Michael Gooden

  2. Sep 8 ·  Bonus

    What If More Life On Farms Solves Everything?

    Soon after last week's special episode dropped, the messages started coming in. One from a paid subscriber (thanks Dominique Hes) commented on how the first 25 minutes or so alone was so impactful, that I needed to write up a summary on Substack. That, I did. And it made me think some of you might appreciate just that part of our conversation carved out on the pod, to share more easily, hear again, or cut to the chase of it if you don’t have an hour to listen to the full episode.  My guest was former star USDA scientist turned whistleblower, now farmer and independent researcher in South Dakota, Dr Jonathan Lundgren. The episode was titled You Want Evidence for Regen Ag? Here It Is. Today, an excerpt from about 4 minutes in. It leads off with the latest on the Executive Order for regenerative agriculture that Lundgren was pivotal to. We go on to talk about the enormous body of evidence that secured it. Before rounding out here with the beginning of Jon’s incredible, tumultuous personal journey, from the USDA times to the 10th birthday celebrated just last month of his Blue Dasher Farm and independent research foundation, Ecdysis, host of the extraordinary 1,000 Farms Initiative.  “Mr. President, the most striking data we have generated from our work is that row croppers in the U.S. have twice the asthma rates, 3 times the clinical depression, 3 times the cancer rate, and a 2,600 fold increase in Parkinson’s rates compared to the rest of society. We are killing our farmers.” “We've got hard data. This became the largest database of regenerative food systems in existence. It's the third largest bio-inventory ever conducted by humans. And the data is like, what these farmers, I mean what they've developed is real. We're not making this up. It's true, it's scalable, it's transferable. This is the answer that we've been looking for.” To hear the conversation in full, including more of Jon’s story and how this research and community action is developing in Australia right now, head to episode 319 on the website, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, or essentially view a table of contents, you can navigate via the chapter markers and transcript. Recorded 27 August 2026. Title slide: In the Oval Office. That’s Jonathan Lundgren on the right, Will Harris to his right (sourced from Lundgren’s post on his website) Please share this episode and/or the related Substack posts below where you can. And thanks for listening! My Substack post summarising some of the latest research and developments in the US and Australia: We’re Killing Our Farmers: While the evidence for regenerative agriculture is flooding in And the previous one, that led to this podcast: Two 'Regen' Farmers Walk Into An Oval Office Debate Blind-Sided – and exit with the 'most support we’ve ever had 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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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!

    What If More Life On Farms Solves Everything?

  3. Sep 1

    You Want Evidence for Regen Ag? Here It Is, with Jonathan Lundgren

    Just weeks ago, I published a piece on Substack titled: Two 'Regen' Farmers Walk Into An Oval Office Debate Blind-Sided – and exit with the 'most support we’ve ever had’. Those two farmers are legends. Will Harris from White Oak Pastures in Georgia, and my guest today, former USDA scientist, now farmer and independent researcher in South Dakota, Dr Jonathan Lundgren. Jon’s story is the stuff of blockbuster films – kind of like the Michael Lewis stories that inspired The Big Short and Moneyball. Jon was a gun researcher with the USDA, but as he came to find deep concerns with chemical use in agriculture, he came to find deeper concerns with the political suppression of that research.  It was actually while receiving a distinguished award from another President that it hit him, ‘playing by the rules of the game wasn’t going to change how we produce food.’ Profound upheaval ensued. He quit his job and began planning what became a successfully crowdfunded farm and research foundation, propelled by a vision to transform food systems.  Just the other day, Blue Dasher Farm and Ecdysis Foundation celebrated their 10th birthdays, and a brewing paradigm change in food, farming and the health of people and planet.  And the Foundation’s 1000 Farms initiative, whose extraordinary findings proved pivotal to the Executive Order that emerged from the Oval Office that day, and now believed to be the largest database of regenerative food systems in the world, is going global, including to Australia, without any cost to farmers, or for that matter, to the rest of us. Jon joins me at dusk on the farm.  If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, or essentially view a table of contents, you can navigate via the chapter markers and transcript. Recorded 27 August 2026. Title image by Katie Bell at the Regenerate Conference 2024 (where ep231 was recorded – A Force for Mending?). Register your farm via the 1000 Farms link above. Update on the situation at Kachana Station, as a bid is launched to save the donkeys. Thanks to everyone who has responded with your support. Music:  Open Wide, by Russo feat. Roy Dotan (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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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!

    You Want Evidence for Regen Ag? Here It Is, with Jonathan Lundgren

  4. Aug 25

    Wild Hope: An Unexpected Odyssey, with Claire Scobie

    Claire Scobie was a successful professional at the top of her game - award-winning author and journalist, and founder of Wordstruck, a narrative-based consultancy working with prominent companies globally – when a single moment cracked something open, and she found herself in a ‘devastated place’. There began the deeply personal odyssey told in her new book Wild Hope: Stories of living and leading in uncertain times. The blurb reads: As old certainties fall away, Claire and her husband move to Gumbaynggirr Country on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, where he is from. From there she meets filmmakers, farmers, CEOs, Elders and shopkeepers everywhere who are asking, what now?  From the push to make rivers swimmable again, to people-owned power, and children speaking Gumbaynggirr in a Coffs Harbour school hall as if the language never left, she learns what happens when people stop waiting for perfect solutions. Together, they are living proof that, beneath the radar, thousands of people and communities are changing things from the ground up. And that’s not the half of what Claire found along the way, as she and her husband, prominent Gumbaynggirr man and former Australian Senator, Aden Ridgeway, unexpectedly found themselves entwined in this journey together, back on Aden’s Country, striving to understand what lies at the heart of regeneration.  If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, you can navigate via the chapter markers & transcript. Recorded 19 August 2026. You can pre-order the book now, with a 20% discount direct from NewSouth books. Launch events and other info. Claire’s Substack. Including a piece she wrote about our conversation. Music:  Desert Horizon, by Nolan Nova (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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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!

    Wild Hope: An Unexpected Odyssey, with Claire Scobie

  5. Aug 18

    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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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 Purpose Pledge: Changing Capitalism As We Know it, with Dr Bronner’s Les Szabo

  6. Aug 11

    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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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!

    How a Tropical Farmer Helped Build A Global Regeneration Network, with André Leu

  7. Trailer

    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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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!

  8. Aug 4

    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. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll 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!

    Regenerative Fashion, Witch Hunts & Re-Enchantment, with Lucianne Tonti
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5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Anthony James
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    466
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The RegenNarration
  • Show Website
    The RegenNarration

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