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.

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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. 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!

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.

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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!

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!

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!

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!

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. 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!

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. 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!