What if the knowledge we need most for the future is something we’ve spent centuries forgetting?

Meet Victor Steffensen, Tagalaka man, author, filmmaker, musician and co-founder of the Living Knowledge Network. For decades, Victor has worked with Indigenous communities in Australia and around the world to revive traditional ways of reading and caring for Country. His new book, The Knowledge, asks a much bigger question: what have we lost by separating ourselves from the natural world - and what might happen if we learned how to listen again?

From why the climate crisis may actually be an identity crisis to how Western science and Indigenous Knowledge Systems can work together and the deceptively simple idea that everything we create should help nature flourish - this is a conversation about Indigenous knowledge as you might never have heard it before. Not as something that belongs to a select few, but as the wisdom that underpins us all.

In this episode:

• Why Victor believes we’re all Indigenous to the planet
• Why he thinks the climate crisis is, at its heart, an identity crisis
• What happens when a landscape loses its identity and how you bring it back
• How ancient knowledge and modern science can strengthen each other
• The possibilities of reviving cultural memory and practice
• And why, instead of arguing about who created the mess we're in, it’s time to get on with cleaning it up

Timestamps:
00:50 Introduction to Victor Steffensen

05:21 Why Indigenous Knowledge is for everyone

09:17 The moment that sparked 'The Knowledge' for Victor

13:00 Indigenous Knowledge v Western Science

17:32 What Victor has learned from apply the Knowledge in different countries

20:06 Midpoint Reflections

22:40 The Knowledge Triangle

24:41 The Identity Crisis

31:21 What does this actually look like?

34:47 The job of cleaning up the mess

41:32 Final Reflections

Want to know more about The Knowledge?
👉 Read Victor's new book, The Knowledge(Available online & at all good bookstores)
👉 Explore the Living Knowledge Network
👉 Follow the team's work: Instagram. LinkedIn. Facebook. Video.

Image Credit:
Harry Vincent - Living Knowledge Network

About Fix The News:
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.

Subscribe & follow:
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.

Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!

This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.

Five years ago, the Taliban banned girls from the classroom. One school refused to stop teaching.

In August 2021, as the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, the staff and students of SOLA, the country’s first and only boarding school for Afghan girls, managed to escape to Rwanda, where they established a temporary campus to continue classes.

Meet Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder of SOLA, and our very first guest on this podcast when we launched in 2023. Five years since the Taliban takeover, Shabana returns to reflect on what has happened since: from Afghan women running secret schools and girls rationing internet data to keep learning to what has become of SOLA’s first cohort and what it means to create a place where Afghan girls have the freedom to simply be “girls who go to school.”

In this episode:

• Why Afghan women are continuing a generations-long tradition of secret schools
• How the internet has become a lifeline for girls and women inside Afghanistan
• What happened to the first cohort of SOLA girls
• How SOLA built a permanent new home for Afghan girls in Rwanda
• The importance of giving girls the safety to be normal teenagers
• What five years of exile, education and resistance can teach us
• Why Shabana’s message to the world is simple: “Don’t look away.”

Help keep the doors open for Afghan girls:

👉 Learn more about SOLA
👉 Donate to SOLA
👉 Explore SOLAx

Timestamps:
00:54 Introducing the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA)

03:10 What hope means to Shabana Basij-Rasikh

05:07 The legacy of Afghan women and eduction

08:43 Why the internet is a lifeline for Afghan women and girls

13:10 SOLAx - the online school

18:04 An update on the students of SOLA

21:45 Midpoint Reflections

23:17 SOLA has finished construction on a permanent campus in Rwanda

27:43 The power of partnerships

29:50 The relationship between SOLA and Rwanda

32:18 What the students of SOLA have taught Shabana

35:40 How the story of SOLA expands what's possible

38:31 Final Thoughts

About Fix The News:
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.

Subscribe & follow:
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.

Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!

This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.

The story of farming has always been one of adaptation. The next chapter may be its most one important yet.

In this special episode of Fix The News, we bring together two conversations exploring one of the defining questions of our time: how do we feed a growing world without destroying the planet that we depend on?

Meet Professor Rattan Lal, one of the world's leading soil scientists and a World Food Prize laureate, whose life's work has transformed our understanding of the living world beneath our feet. Then meet Alesha Miller, Chief Strategy Officer at Digital Green, who's helping smallholder farmers across Africa and Asia combine generations of local knowledge with artificial intelligence to build more resilient food systems.

Together, they help us unpack that that the future of agriculture isn't about choosing between nature and technology, tradition and innovation, or human and artificial intelligence. It's about strengthening both.

In this episode:

• Why healthy soil is the foundation of healthy food systems
• How our lifestyle choices today will help shape the future
• The importance of the world's 500 million smallholder farmers
• How AI can amplify rather than replace human knowledge
• Why trust matters as much as technology
• Why the future of farming may depend on combining old wisdom with new ideas

Timestamps:
00:13 The most common occupation on earth

03:45 Meet Professor Rattan Lal

04:54 Why soil is a living entity

08:37 What does Regenerative Agriculture actually mean?

12:05 The Law of Return

20:53 Midpoint Reflections

22:47 Meet Alesha Miller

25:47 What is Digital Green?

30:14 Can weather predictions save AI?

37:21 Technology and Trust

43:04 Closing Reflections: Choose Both

Dig Deeper:

👉Professor Rattan Lal
👉 Digital Green

About Fix The News:
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.

Subscribe & follow:
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.

Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!

This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.