Greening the Apocalypse: Recent Episodes
RRR - Triple R
There is a crack in everything, that's where the light gets in. Each week the Greening the Apocalypse team talk to the tinkerers and thinkerers, the freaks and geeks from permaculturists and eco-farmers to alt-tech innovators and peer-to-peer information networkers who are growing fascinating new systems through the fault lines of the old. Presented by Bushy, Adam Grubb, Kate Dundas and Jed MacCartney from Melbourne's Triple R FM.
Someone who's heading to Tasmania to survive the fall of civilisation gets some advice from someone who's been there, done that. Kate Gracey is a self described "doomer" who is moving to southern Tasmania this December to grow potatoes while living on a farm with her son. Peter Harley, spent most of a decade in the 1980s living in a cooperative at Goongerah in East Gippsland, concerned about nuclear armageddon. We think they should talk. David Spratt joins Adam and Jed to host.
Is Slow Food and organic produce an elitist form of status signalling? What's so good about McDonalds?! And why do we need food waste?
Food historian Rachel Laudan joins Adam Grubb and Sarah Coles to talk reasons why she thinks many in the ethical and sustainable food movements could use a little historical perspective, and it's a fascinating and provocative discussion. See her critique of the Slow Food movement, and her award winning book 2013's Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History for further reading.
There's probably no more important single number than how much energy we produce as a globe, nor a more important prediction of what direction that trend is heading. It's almost impossible to think of anything we care about that won't somehow be shaped by those numbers. So Adam and Jed speak with James Ward from University of South Australia, to discuss his co-authored study into projections of global fossil fuel production, and a complementary paper on whether we can decouple GDP growth from energy use and environmental impact.
Our climate is too hot. We are in an emergency. How do we get this message out to the wider public? Bushy and Jed are with clinical psychologist Jane Morton, making the case for emergency climate action.
Bushy and Jed chat with Nikola Van de Wetering from 4ZZZZ in Brisbane on her audio documentary At The Coalface and the general attitude towards coal in QLD. You can hear the documentary here: https://www.cbaa.org.au/article/nfds-2018-coalface
Bushy, Kate and Jed are in the studio, fronting up to climate change. They look at examples of what has been done in the past and what needs to be done in the future - A war scale effort is necessary!
Adam and Kent welcome first time host David Spratt, author of What Lies Beneath: The scientific understatement of climate risks. They chat with Rob Crawford - Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne - on the environmental impact of buildings.
Adam chats to Manfred Lenzen, Professor in the School of physics of the University of Sydney, about his study on the energy, carbon emissions, water, biodiversity loss and labour that goes into powering our lives. They talk energy slaves, nuclear energy and reconciling your attitudes towards renewable energy and affluence.
Bushy, Adam, Kent and Sarah are in to chat with Kirstin Bradley, one third of the sustainability skills and permaculture education project Milkwood team. They cover various aspects of Milkwood's new book, ranging within The Tomato, Mushroom Cultivation, Natural Beekeeping, Seaweed and Wild Food.
Arianne and Kate are with Dylan McConnell, an energy analyst from the Australian-German Climate and Energy College. On this episode, they talk about where we get our electricity from, the transition to clean energy in Australia, and a fact check on electricity prices.
Kate, Bushy and Kent are joined by Matiu Bush, to look at loneliness - Matiu is the founder of One Good Street, a social networking platform for encouraging neighbour initiated care for older residents at risk of social isolation and loneliness.
Bushy, Jed and Ariane Wilkinson chat with Pete Smith (Manager of CERES Fair Wood and Raphy Kruse (general skills collector) about some of the harrowing phenomena born from illegal logging, and potential avenues for ethical consumption.
Adam, Peta and Jed chat to Dr. Chris Williams and student Charlotte Bartlett-Wynne from Burnley Campus of Melbourne University's Urban Horticulture associate degree. Along with Pat Turnbull and Kirsty Edwards they have started the not-for-profit Farm Raiser, an organisation that sets up market gardens on vacant, underutilised land at schools to grow and sell food as a healthy fundraiser. They look at how the cultural status of growing food has changed in Australia and the realities of market gardening.
Adam is joined by KMO, host of the C-realm podcast to discuss whether our world is on an unstoppable trajectory of material, social and technological progress, or if perhaps if faith in that process might be allowing us to defer responsibility for addressing some environmental and humanitarian crises. KMO's got a new web comic, check it out at GEBB.io. This is an extended podcast-only episode.
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Adam, Kate and Jed chat to Ian Dunlop (former corporation executive and head of coal council, turned activist) and David Spratt (climate activist, author and businessman). They unravel risk/scientific/political understatement, and the lack of imagination to think the unpalatable, when it comes to climate change.
Bushy and Jed chat with Justin Cally from WOTCH (Wildlife of the Central Highlands) about the conservation, activism and citizen science of our forests.
Jed, Bushy and Adam chat to Rohan Anderson; author of Whole Larder Love and A Year Of Practiculture, about his article "How being ethical made me hate being ethical", the online world and the way we communicate ethics and food.
Katie and Jed speak with Erin O'Donnell; a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, and Katie O'Bryan; lecturer in the Faculty of Law, and an Associate of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, about the law and rights of the natural world.
Bushy, Katie and Jed chat to Professor Peter Doherty about Pandemics. Peter has shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine in 1996 with Swiss colleague Rolf Zinkernagel, for their discovery of how the immune system recognises virus-infected cells. He was Australian of the Year in 1997, and has since been commuting between St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne.
Bushy, Adam and Jed talk to Dr Rachael Livermore; ARC DECRA Fellow in the Astrophysics Group at the University of Melbourne, about the formation the universe, and what coronal mass ejections (sunspots) can have on Earth.
This week the team chats with Chris Walsh, expert in the health of rivers, streams and their landscapes at the University of Melbourne and a senior member of the Melbourne Waterway Research- Practice Partnership with Melbourne Water. They talk about biodiversity in rivers around the world, introduced species wreaking havoc in Australian rivers and looking after our creeks and streams in increasingly urbanised landscapes.
Adam and Jed chat with Mark Tyler (organiser at Earthworker) and Ella Ryan (worker/owner at Redgum Cleaning Coop) about co-ops, economic democracy and democracy in the workplace. What are the challenges to unions and cooperatives working together?
Bushy, Adam and Jed sit down with Dr Josh Healy, chatting about the changing nature of "work" from traditional manual jobs with long careers to gigs with turbulent change and no long-term stability. They discuss a range of solutions and promising directions in this space.
Adam and Sarah talk to David Holmgren on Retrosuburbia: Energy descent, what Melbourne might look like in 40 years, and the retrofits people can implement at home.
Ross Harding is a creative sustainability consultant. His business, Finding Infinity, provides self sufficiency advice, with projects ranging from houses to city blocks. They work not only on the technical and financial solutions, but equally the culture required to create the transformation. The team talk about changing the way people live, trying and failing at corporate sustainability and future ways of living.
Patrick Jones calls himself a 'neo-peasant'. Bushy, Adam and Jed chat to the writer, community gardener, artist and author of The Art of Free Travel with Meg Ulman, about his lifestyle.
Bushy, Kate and Jed chat with Lisa Howard of the Bendigo Botanical Gardens. They talk planting and planning for a changing climate, the roles of urban design, and botanical gardens in cooling the city and suburbs.
Bushy, Kate, Jed chat to Ary Hoffman, expert in insect ecology and the decline of flying bugs. The team look at the historical context and evolution of insects on Earth, the War on Bugs and looking ahead to our ecological future with insects.
Bushy and Jed chat with Margot and Louise from the Country Women's Association, who are here to show that the CWA is about more than cake. They are advocating for and facilitating social change and support to those in need in their many branches.
Adam and Jed hear from Kat Lavers (Hobson's Bay City Council) on her research into the co-benefits (psychological, social, health etc) of urban food growing and how to approach councils.
Bushy, Kate and Jed are chatting country vs city. How do our carbon footprints compare depending on where we inhabit? The team look at how community, choice and resilience are factors in our way of life and our environmental impact.
Adam, Kate, Jed are joined by former guest Rafael Schouten, who studies plant physiology and energy dynamics. Together, they use some scientific literacy to consider viral environmental videos, talking thermodynamics, algae for biofuel and indoor grow-light vertical farming. Plus, they look to the future with emerging technologies.
Alanta Colley chats all things bees with Bushy, Adam and Jed ahead of her Comedy Festival show "Days Of Our Hives". Colley is public health practitioner, comedian and co-founder of Sci Fight Science Comedy Debate held at the Spotted Mallard. She has performed for the Gates Foundation, Adelaide's Science Exchange and is a regular at Political Asylum and the Laboratory. By day she teaches engineering students about international development, by night she tells jokes about bees to confused crowds.
Are we lonelier than we have ever been? Jed, Kate and Adam chat with Julian Able, Director of Compassionate Communities UK and a consultant in palliative care, currently in Cornwall. Together, we look at ways of dealing with connection and community.
Adam chats with keynote speaker, Dr Lenore Newman, at the Urban Agriculture Forum. They tackle urban food security, peri-urban farming and sustainable food systems. Adam, Kate and Jed sit down in studio with Andrew Butt, Senior Lecturer in community planning and development at La Trobe, to follow up on some of these ideas.
Bushy, Kate and Jed chat with special guest and agrarian pioneer Melissa Connors. Melissa packed up her bags and took to the countryside, eventually founding 'This Farm Needs a Farmer', building a bridge in the gap of hand-me-down knowledge in agriculture and farmers.
Bushy, Jed and Adam chat with Dr Samuel Alexander, founder of the Simplicity Institute and author of many books, and a new as-yet-unpublished essay 'Carbon Civilization and the Energy Descent Future', written with Joshua Floyd. They talk about making cooking gas (biogas) from your household compost, as Sam is doing in his own backyard, and while they're at it, look at the history of how energy has influenced the cultural evolution and structures of the human race.
Bushy, Kate and Jed chat with Gilbert Rochecouste from Village Well. Gilbert is a leading voice in placemaking. His catalyst ideas have regenerated iconic places and enlivened many urban and rural communities. Gilbert sees the potential of placemaking to inspire a deeper cultural and social environmental awareness and stewardship to make a difference both locally and globally.
Adam, Kate, Sarah and Jed are back in the studio for the first episode of 2018, reflecting on what caught their eyes over the summer break; From the state of Adani, to Soul Food Farms, varying ecological cultures across the globe, and more.
One of the many battles we face going forward in a world of resource depletion, economic instability and political upheaval, is that it seems that our ability to organise and coordinate as a group is dying. The whole team is here to close 2017, talking about group dynamics, communication and how we might save our collective skins by learning to communicate better and establishing team goals.
Can we help reverse climate change while creating more productive, profitable, ecologically functional and beautiful rural landscapes? Connor Stedman joins us to argue the case that yes, we can. Connor is a field ecologist, environmental planner, and farm planner at Appleseed Permaculture in New York state, USA, and runs an internationally recognised course on 'carbon farming'.
Books mentioned: The Carbon Farming Solution by Eric Toensmeier and Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken.
Sometimes it feels like billionaire Elon Musk - the Paypal co-founder and and main force behind SpaceX and Tesla Motors - is single handedly revitalising that mid-20th Century spirit of can-do capitalism, upgraded with a eco-green racing stripe. He's a company owner that's captured the public imagination in a way that makes Apple's Steve Jobs seem so pedestrian. Elon also says he can bring a human telepathy device to market in four years, and that he's planning to build a city on Mars. His company Tesla Motors is worth 125 times more per car it produces than General Motors. How much of his empire is based on reality? How much is based on his cult of personality? And what does it tell us about a world tired of cynicism and searching for a hero?
To discuss we're joined by our friend, ecologist and computer geek, Rafael Schouten.
What exciting crops can we grow in the backyard that you can't readily get in the supermarket, and what crops are adapted to a warming climate?
We're joined by Dr Chris Williams who researches and teaches about the social, cultural and technical aspects of urban agriculture at the Burnley Campus of Melbourne University. Amongst his many interests he runs the Novel Crops Project which identifies less widely grown food plants for cultivation in Melbourne gardens, for example, sweet potato and taro. The Project is trying to keep people excited about the idea of 'edible landscapes', gardens that look great and inviting but also provide food. Check out Chris's blog: People, Plants, Landscape.
We need to rapidly draw down carbon from the atmosphere, and radically reduce the amount we are pumping out at the same time. If that were achievable, what might the world look like? What would our lives be like in 2040? To explore this, we welcome back Seona Candy, research fellow with the Victorian Eco-innovation Lab at the University of Melbourne. VEIL and Seona are a part of the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) and their Visions and Pathways 2040 (VP2040) project. VP2040 is a research and engagement project to develop, analyse and communicate visions and pathways for transforming Australian cities to achieve rapid decarbonisation and increased resilience in the face of climate change. And their latest and final report -- the result of their multidisciplinary four year study just came out. It explore two very different scenarios for achieving a low carbon world.
Bushy, Kate and Jed (all parents) and Adam (who's childless) take some time to consider the reasons or not for bringing kids into the world, a world threatened by resource depletion, climate change and other ecological crises.
Charles Massy gained a Bachelor of Science in the 70s before returning to the family farm near Cooma and the Snowy Mountains. He has been farming since, and in 2009 Charles Massy returned to ANU to complete a PhD in Human Ecology. In his latest book Call of the Reed Warbler he explores regenerative agriculture; an approach to farming that rebuilds topsoil, increases biodiversity, and importantly for Australia, resurrects eroded land and combats climate change. Charles joins us in the studio. Here's Sarah's review of the book.
On 11 November, Arts House will transform the North Melbourne Town Hall into an Emergency Relief Centre. The project is called Refuge, and we're joined by Arts House producer Tara Prowse to discuss this collaboration between artists, emergency services and the public. The theme of Refuge this year is heat waves, and to tell us how Melbourne and Australia will be effected by heat and other extreme weather events in the future we're joined by storm chaser and Melbourne University climate scientist Andrew King.
(Photo by MusikAnimal licensed CC BY-SA 4.0)
We speak with Daryl Taylor, a survivor of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Kinglake. In 2009 when that enormous tragedy hit, Daryl already had over a decade's experience in community and organisational development roles. And since that day in February he has been involved on many informal and formal community based recovery and advocacy projects. His work has been acknowledged with 13 state and national awards and best practice commendations. And his experiences in the aftermath of the fires deeply inform his work now - and have lead him to reflect on the creative chaos of bottom up community-led responses, compared to what he saw as poorly fitting and disempowering government responses. In 2015 he completed with his colleague Helen Goodman a two year report Place-Based and Community-Led: Specific Disaster Preparedness and Generalisable Community Resilience which he hopes can help communities learn from Kinglake's experiences.
Later in the show we talk with small farmer Tammi Jonas about her battle with regulators that consider her and other free-range farmer operations legally the same as huge battery operations. She mentions this petition.
Steve Keen is professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He's credited with being one of the few economists who warned of the Global Financial Crisis and his books include 2001's Debunking Economics and his just published Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? He joins us from Amsterdam to discuss the incredible blindspot at the heart of mainstream economics, why Australia looks vulnerable to a financial crisis, and what individuals and policy makers might do about it.
Follow Steve's work at:www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen
We chat with Katherine Wilson, author of Tinkering: Australians Reinvent DIY Culture. She says "home-based tinkering - the everyday commitment to material problem-solving - is emerging as a legitimate vocation, in ways we haven't seen since pre-industrial times." We talk about the joys of pulling things apart and putting things together.
Our guest this episode believes there is a third way which challenges the dichotomous view that when it comes to forestry, one ought to be either a conservationist or profiteer. Rowan Reid is a scientist and himself a farmer and forester. He's also been a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Uni for 20 years, and is the managing director of the not-for profit Australian Agroforestry Foundation. He won the 2001 Australian Eureka Prize for Excellence in Environmental Education for his farmer course: The Australian Master TreeGrower). His farm Bambra Agroforestry Farm in the Otway Ranges is set up as an outdoor classroom and living laboratory for tree growing, and it has had over 10,000 visitors come on tours. Since 1985 he's written or co-authored nine books on related topics, the latest of which and surely his magnum opus, is truly wonderful Heartwood: The Art and Science of Growing Trees for Conservation and Profit.
We speak with Craig Byatt and Liz Franzmann about their recent experience building a tiny house.
Craig Byatt is a holistic architect and Liz has a background in sustainability and project management. We spoke about how the demand for tiny houses is on the rise despite the average size of the new Australian home being a whopping 231 square metres.
We discussed the laws around tiny houses and the way that councils are playing a game of catch up in this area. We looked at examples of tiny houses being used in a social justice context, for example, Quixote Village in the US is one of the first tiny house communities set up to address issues of homelessness.
Later in the show we hear from Nick Lamberton who until last week lived in a tiny house (and ran a tropical fish breeding enterprise) in a western suburbs caravan park for eight years. We discuss this article: Reclaiming "Redneck" Urbanism: What Urban Planners can Learn from Trailer Parks, and what life was actually like in an urban caravan park.
Craig and Liz are coming back to talk about Community Land Trusts, one solution to the problem of acquiring land to put your tiny house on. In the meantime check out the tiny house planning resource, Small Is Beautiful, the tiny house documentary, and this New York Times article about living with a lot less. Sarah makes reference to a tiny house being stolen last week allegedly by a 24 year old man believed to be from Canberra.
We're joined by eloquent US podcaster KMO, who has made hundreds of hours of fascinating radio through The C-Realm, which covers many of the same topics as Greening the Apocalypse, only he's been at it since 2006. KMO shares his personal journey from a well paid early Amazon employee -- a time when he was inspired by techno-utopian visions -- to an out-of-work divorcee feeling more attracted to doomsday scenarios; and we discuss what role psychology plays into our visions for the future. If you want to hear the longer version of KMO's story check out C-Realm Radio 045 from about 30 minutes in -- it's great radio.
Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, broadcaster and activist on social, environmental and spiritual issues. His books include Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power described as "world changing" by George Monbiot, "life changing" by the Bishop of Liverpool and "truly mental" by Thom Yorke of Radiohead. His two most recent books are Spiritual Activism - Leadership as Service co-authored with Matt Carmichael and Poacher's Pilgrimage: an Island Journey. He joins us via the wires to talk about growing up on an island community, experiencing Papua New Guinea, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful and experinceing the poverty of affluence, and his life long work to emphasise the importance of cultures of place and his experience of rebuilding them after forcible displacement on the Isle of Eigg and in urban settings with his GalGael project. We also touch on the island Presbyterian heritage he shares with Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump who "was wrung from the loins of a woman from Lewis" and how the force can be turned to the dark side.
We talk with David Platt from Resilient Futures to remove the buzzword tag from 'disruption' and actually provide some insight to how changes and adaptation in people, community and technology have always been with us, and always will be, but we can develop strategies to work with the grain of change.
With Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steven Hawking all warning that future artificial intelligences of our own creation may pose existential threats to humanity, we delve into both the risks as well as utopian visions surrounding superintelligent AI as we are joined by Adam Ford of Science, Technology & the Future. We make a few references to Nick Bostrom's excellent book Superintelligence. Max Tegmark's new book Life 3.0 is a more approachable introduction.
The marvellous Prof Tim Flannery was once described by the Financial Times as akin to a cross between Charles Darwin and Indiana Jones for his pioneering mammalogy and paleontology field work. But he gave up this adventurous life to focus on climate change writing and campaigning. Tim drops into the studio and we discuss why, and talk about his new book (his second follow up to the highly influential The Weather Makers): Sunlight and Seaweed: An Argument For How To Feed, Power, and Clean Up The World.
We're joined by punk rock icon and vegan athlete John Joseph, author of Meat is For Pussies: A How-To-Guide for Dudes Who Want to Get Fit, Kick Ass, and Take Names. Before John was lead singer of The Cro Mags, he grew up on the streets and in foster homes. Got into gangs. He was drug mule. Stabbed. Shot. Went to jail. Went AWOL from the navy. Now at the age of 55 he's a plant powered triathlete, author and spiritual warrior. Sarah Coles interviewed him as John was in his tour van travelling through Kansas with his new band, Bloodclot.
Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins describes the late historian and green economist David Fleming as "one of the most original, brilliant, urgently-needed, under-rated and ahead-of-his-time thinkers of the last 50 years."
Fleming thought the globalised market economy would, in the not too distant future, begin to fail as it faces limits to growth from resource depletion, and said: "Localisation stands, at best, at the limits of practical possibility. But it has the decisive argument in its favour that there is no alternative." And his work explores how we can create rich local cultures and economies as an alternative to global capitalism.
Fleming died suddenly in 2010, but his good friend, Shaun Chamberlin has recently turned a manuscript Fleming left behind, into two books: his magnum opus, Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It, and a smaller introductory text, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. We speak to Shaun by Skype from his home in Devon. Shaun's also behind the website darkoptimism.org where you can read his rather impressive bio, which includes co-founding Transition Town Kingston, and authoring the Transition movement's second book The Transition Timeline.
You can find out more about the books at the Fleming Policy Institute.
We also mention the Dark Mountain Project and Mark Boyle, the Moneyless Man.
The podcast contains a slightly extended interview than what went to air.
x GtA
We talk all things booze making: gastonomic, hedonic and sustainabilic. Bushy's mate former professional beer maker and now avid home brewer (and data journalist) Marc Moncrief joins us.
What's the environmental impact of your favourite illicit drug? We dig deep, and the answers are sometimes a bit of a buzz kill. Although there's some happy high news too. Which team member was microdosing during this episode? You be the judge.
We talk climate change, humanitarian crises and conflict with David Spratt, Research Coordinator for the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. He blogs and publishes reports at ClimateCodeRed.org a site named after his co-authored 2008 book. His latest publication is Disaster Alley: Climate Change, Conflict & Risk featuring a foreword by former Pentagon official Sherri Goodman.
We talk to the eloquent Dr Saamdu Chetri, who leads the country of Bhutan's efforts to measure Gross National Happiness (GNP). Dr Chetri holds PhD in Commerce, Master in Commerce and Post-Graduation Certificate in HRM, and was a founder of the Bhutan Peoples United Party. He now runs the kingdom's Gross National Happiness Centre which has made this small landlocked Himalayan country capture attention all around the world.
Dr Chetri is in town for some School of Life events.
This is the second and final part of our conversation with Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute and regarded as one of the world's foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. Listen to the first part on Triple R on demand or on our podcast.
Heinberg is the author of 13 books, including some seminal works with titles like The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World. His latest book is Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path to One Hundred Percent Clean Energy (available for free online!) co-authored with Berkeley energy expert David Fridley. If you want to do an online course with Richard, check out Think Resilience.
Also. Sarah reviews pot noodles.
We talk peak oil with Richard Heinberg, Senior (and very fine) Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute. Richard is regarded as one of the world's foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He's the author of 13 books, including some seminal works with titles like The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World. His latest book is Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path to One Hundred Percent Clean Energy (available for free online!) co-authored with Berkeley energy expert David Fridley. If you want to do an online course with Richard checkout Think Resilience. This is the first of a two part interview.
Later in the show we talk about the concept of 'energy slaves'. Check out this video an Olympic cyclist vs. a toaster.
We talk with the fascinating Pamela Morgan about her life, which includes being a driving force behind the first two decades the Collingwood Childrens' Farm, and later one of the people to bring permaculture to Cuba during their devastating loss of food and oil imports after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
We speak with Chido Govera, a 31 year old Zimbabwean farmer, activist, educator and founder of The Future of Hope Foundation, a group that is committed to ending poverty, abuse and victimhood at grassroots level in Africa through food security.
Chido's background is one of the toughest childhoods imaginable, one that saw her orphaned at the age of 7, with her remaining relatives offering more abuse than support, while she was responsible for feeding and caring for her very elderly grandmother, and her malnourished younger brother. Her long road out of this situation came via the unlikely path of mushroom cultivation, and she now teaches thousands of people across the world - and in particular other vulnerable young women in Zimbabwe - how to grow mushrooms, as a way of gaining some autonomy in their lives.
Later we talk about growing mushrooms at home with keen mushroom grower, forager and educator Nick Ritar of Milkwood.
Our friends, be warned, this is a something of a dark episode. We share (over-share?) about our deepest darkest fears for the future, and ponder the value of fear and anxiety as motivators for change.
Claire Dunn is a former environmental campaigner who had a transformative year living in the bush without technology, or even matches, practicing nature awareness and rewilding skills. She wrote about her experiences in My Year Without Matches.
She now facilitates nature based reconnection retreats and wilderness rites of passage. Find out more at Nature's Apprentice.
Author of The Wondrous World of Weeds, Pat Collins, drops us a line to talk all things edible, medicinal and growing for free. And Bushy's offspring, the bird enthusiast Shrubby -- pictured getting instruction in flipping the bird -- gives listeners advice on getting started with chickens.
We talk with environmental lawyer Ariane Wilkinson about what's so bad with the proposed Adani Carmichael coal mine. In summary it's really extraordinarily bad on a both economic and environmental levels. This is a clench your fists episode.
Return guest Simplicity Institute founder Dr Samuel Alexander ponders whether the environment can survive the human brain's emotional biases, and what can the environmental movement can do to get a message out in a 'post-truth' era?
And we talk lessons from the dirty ol' bastard of ancient greek philosophers: Diogenese.
Sam's latest books are Just Enough is Plenty: Thoreau's Alternative Economics and Deface the Currency: The Lost Dialogues of Diogenes. He also mentions The Dark Cellars Project in which artists submit images that make the messages of voluntary simplicity a bit more visceral and visual.
Return guest Simplicity Institute founder Dr Samuel Alexander ponders whether the environment can survive the human brain's emotional biases, and what can the environmental movement can do to get a message out in a 'post-truth' era?
And we talk lessons from the dirty ol' bastard of ancient greek philosophers: Diogenese.
Sam's latest books are Just Enough is Plenty: Thoreau's Alternative Economics and Deface the Currency: The Lost Dialogues of Diogenes. He also mentions The Dark Cellars Project in which artists submit images that make the messages of voluntary simplicity a bit more visceral and visual.
Why are Melbourne apartment complexes so expensive and soulless? What can we learn from Germany and the Netherlands, and from the few interesting projects around Melbourne to have cheaper, more liveable and less environmentally destructive buildings? Our wonderful guests exploring this topic are Katherine Sundermann, an Associate at MGS Architects and Assemble Papers, and Andy Fergus, an Urban Designer at the City of Melbourne. They mention 'deliberative development' models in which a group of intending owner-occupiers work with funders and architects to build it their way, rather than going through a property developer.
Here's a recent article from Katherine and Andy: Learning from Berlin: lessons for emerging collective housing.
We talk about the future, and different scenarios for how we might just survive it in some style, with Philippa Chandler from the Victorian Ecoinnovation Lab (VEIL) and their project Scenarios 2040 project.
Later, Kate talks about My Year Without Matches by Claire Dunn.
We speak with Adrian Hearn, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Melbourne University. He has been going to Cuba every year of the last 16 and has recently received funding from the Australian Government (DFAT - COALAR) for a project looking at urban agricultural practices between Melbourne, Havana, and other cities in Latin America and China. He says Latin America has some of the best practices in the world in resilient and sustainable urban farming, and in Cuba during the stressful period following the fall of the Soviet Union, urban agriculture was necessary for survival.
Later in the show we talk with favour makers Ru Norbury and Conor O'Hanlon from Favours who offer free services to anyone who just needs a little help!
We're joined by 10 year Triple R veterans (from whom we inherited the Tuesday 7pm time-slot), the architects formerly known as "The Architects": Simon Knott and Stuart Harrison; along with someone who's had an immeasurable effect on the shape and culture of Melbourne: architect and planner Rob Adams. Cohost Kate Dundas leads a discussion on urban planning, sustainability and liveability, corruption and retrofitting the suburbs.
Nikki Valentini of Growing Abundance tells us about the culture clash at the heart of the transition from dim sims and Pepsi to organic local food in a Castlemaine high school. Later in the show we consider the unintended consequences of green planning and gentrification. We also mention Annie Raser-Rowland and Greening the Apocalypse's Adam Grubb's new book: The Art of Frugal Hedonism.
We talk about everything from bike policy to autonomous cars and robotaxis, as we consider the future of transport, with Elliot Fishman, Director of the Institute of Sensible Transport.
Later in the show, we pay homage to that iconoclast, raconteur and the godfather of permaculture, Bill Mollison who passed away on Sat 24th Sept at the age of 88.
Meg Ulman is co-author with her partner poet Patrick Jones of The Art of Free Travel, about their adventures with kids and a terrier riding bikes up and down the east coast for 14 months. All together they make up the entity known as The Artist As Family. We spoke with them about that trip in a previous episode, but this time we find out about their continuing adventures while living a more settled lifestyle, including homeschooling son Zephyr, and the Hepburn Relocalisation Network. In the latter part of the show we talk about how someone working a 9-5 job might take on some of the simpler life!
Humans have been making use of fire for around a million years, but what if we've been doing it wrong? In the first half of the episode we talk how to do it right, with rocket stoves and biochar, with appropriate technologist Joel Meadows.
Where there is smoke there is fire, but the reverse need not be true says Joel. Smoke is merely inefficiently burnt wood, and all those coughs, cancers and deforestation through the eons were sadly for nought. Rocket stoves are almost smokeless and can be built from scrap.
In the second half of the show we talk with climate scientist Professor David Karoly. He and fellow Climate Change Authority member Professor Clive Hamilton recently released an unprecedented Minority Report arguing that the Authority's latest majority report is politicised and its recommendations lead towards dangerous warming rather than minimising climate change.
We talk changing your life and career in response to environmental fears with corporate world exile Andrew Lucas, now gardening expert and commercial compost maker, and co-organiser of the conference The Future of Local Food.
Later in the show we ponder why environmentally themed music sucks. To listen back to our full show the week before on this topic, complete with really shitty (and some good) music, stream it here.
We speak with Lachlan Simpson about the ever mysterious 'cryptocurrency' bitcoin. Bitcoin has both its many critics (who worry about crime and tax avoidance) and champions (who promote its decentralised, private nature). But this night we explore its environmental impact and energy demands. It turns out it takes a lot of juice to power a cryptocurrency and keep it secure and anonymous.
Zainil Zainuddin grew up on a self sufficient farm in Malaysia but these days she's a researcher and scholar in local food and urban agriculture, currently doing her PhD at RMIT. Some of her studies so far have involved working with home gardeners in Melbourne to figure out exactly how much food they grow. So what does home food production offer urban resilience, and how much can we really grow at home?
Where will Melbourne's food come from as urban sprawl, climate change and farm degradation reduce local growing capacity while the city grows to a projected 7 million by 2050? We ask Seona Candy, a food and urban systems researcher at VEIL (Victorian Eco Innovation Lab), who's recently co-authored the report Foodprint Melbourne.
While three fifths of the world's calories come from just three crops, John Ferris grows over 700 different edible species (not to mentions hundreds more cultivars) at his nursery business, Edible Forest Gardens! It's veritable botanical imaginarium of uncommon food plants, strange and wonderful! He brings some samples in for us to taste. :)
Let's squeeze more people into smaller houses. That's actually the main theme of the show as we think about sharehousing and grannie flats from environmental and happiness perspectives. To help us we have Kulja Coulston in the studio. When she's not presenting The Grapevine on Triple R, Kulja is managing editor of Sanctuary Magazine, which is about sustainable home design and architecture, a publication of the ATA (Alternative Technology Association). Check out their free Sustainable House Day where you get to see in other people's private homes.
Asking "what is agroecology, and can it save the world?" with agroecologist and permaculture researcher Rafter Sass-Ferguson, who joined us on the wires from Portugal. Rafter is currently a visiting researcher at the Center for Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Change at the University of Lisbon. Check out his work at Liberation Ecology.
Tonight's guest Russell Shields talks food security for asylum seekers. After years with the food rescue operation SecondBite, in 2014 Russell co-founded The Community Grocer, a not-for-profit and social enterprise that aims to improve access for people living in public housing to fresh, affordable food. These days he works at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, working to ensure that asylum seekers have access to good food, and drives the ASRC Food Justice Truck.
'Ethicurean' farmer Tammi Jonas joins us in studio to talk about the problems with your supermarket's bacon, and more ethical and tasty alternatives. Tammi with her family runs Jonai Farms in Central Vic raising pastured rare breed pigs, and she's also something of an agrarian intellectual who writes, talks and organises towards a regenerative, ethical food system, including being the current President of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance.
We talk urban planning and the big issues facing Melbourne with James Larmour-Reid, Managing Director at Planisphere. Planisphere is a planning, urban design and landscape architecture consultancy. James is also the Victorian President of the Planning Institute of Australia. James also helped set up 3000acres -- and urban community gardens on underused land program -- with our co-host Kate Dundas.
Our guest is community organiser Theo Kitchener. Theo is founder of several groups, including Doing It Ourselves which aims to both broaden understanding of the debt crisis and peak resources and encourage action for the sake of personal preparedness, happiness and ethical living. And the associated Livelyhood which is a network of mutually supporting co-operatives for working and playing together.
We talk with Professor Steve Keen, Head of the School of Economics, Politics and History at Kingston University London. He's one of the few economists who anticipated the Great Financial Crisis and says that mainstream economists failed to anticipate it, not because it was an unpredictable "Black Swan", but because their theories give them blind spots, which caused them to ignore the cause of the crisis: banks lending too much money to finance speculation rather than investment. He's also one of the few prominent economists with a bit of ecological literacy. His book Debunking Economics, first published in 2001, and now in an updated and expanded edition, explores these issues and more. He's also behind a crowdfunded global financial modeling software project called Minsky which he believes could "hopefully mean that economists never again lead us blindly into a crisis like the Global Financial Crisis". See his websites: www.debtdeflation.com/blogs | www.ideaeconomics.org
We talk shop, without the supermarket, with Robert Pekin, a former 4th generation dairy farmer, who like tens of thousands of his small- and medium-scale colleagues, lost the family farm in the 1990s, as a casualty of the de-regulation of the Australian dairy industry. And just like it is for so many dairy farmers in the current dairy crisis, this was a personally very traumatic time for Robert. His path to redemption and healing led him to the discovery and practice of community-supported agriculture (CSA), and he established, and now runs along with his partner Emma-Kate Rose, the social enterprise Food Connect in Brisbane, which since 2005 has been on a mission to create a fairer food system for both farmers and eaters.
Deano Goodbrew, of The Goodbrew Co on getting tipsy on kombucha and the challenges of food regulation for small producers, and about Save the Planet, a new political party and community campaign focused on reversing global warming and re-creating a safe climate.
We talk about how to use dead wombats and doormats to improve your soil with one of Australia's gardening legends, and author of over 140 books (!!!) Jackie French.
Talking going off grid living with maverick inner Sydney sustainable living guy Michael Mobbs, author of Sustainable House and Sustainable Food. www.sustainablehouse.com.au www.streetcoolers.com.au
Alison Pouliot is an ecologist and nature photographer with a passion all things wild and in particular the world of fungi. She chases the fungi season around the world, dividing her time between the mushrooms seasons of Switzerland and Central Victoria. The latter is where you can follow her through the forests in search of fascinating and sometimes edible fungi on her popular fungi foraging and ecology workshops. Check them out at www.alisonpouliot.com.
You, sweet listener, produce one of the best fertilisers known to humanity, several times a day. And if we keep putting it into drinking water and sending it out to sea, we don't have a chance of hanging around on this planet. So this show we talk the whys and hows of using urine in the garden.
Talking about how our domesticated herbivores -- cows and sheep -- can be used to restore landscape, with "restoration grazing" practitioner Jodi Roebuck. He tells us that the solution to overgrazing -- one of the most environmentally damaging practices in the wold -- involves increasing the number of animals on the land. WTF?, you say. And he talks about how the methods he uses improve grass growth and carbon capture into the soil. (Check out Roebuck Farm on the facecrack.)
Bushy's mate Stephen Pepper stops by the studio to discuss his move from a busy North Melbourne intersection to living off the grid in an old classroom in the Macedon Ranges. Stephen discusses the day to day reality involved with going off the grid and provides some helpful tips for people interested in this lifestyle.
Satyajit Das is a former banker with over 35 years' experience in financial markets and is an expert on the complex financial instruments at the heart of the Global Financial Crisis. We talk about the size, nature and corruption of the financial industries, and what the end of growth might look like. Das's books include Extreme Money and the recent A Banquet of Consequences.
Talking intentional communities and natural building with Dr Samuel Alexander. Sam is the founder of The Simplicity Institute which is an educational and research group which envisions a simple way of life. His most recent books are Simple Living in History: Pioneers of the Deep Future and Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation. The latter book led one reader to offer him some land. The land and project there (in Moe, Gippsland) is called Wurruk'an, and it's an on the ground experiment where the theories of voluntary simplicity are put to the test.
This evenings guest is Mariam Issa, a woman who carries many arrows in her quiver, including author, story teller and public speaker, community building cook and gardener, advocate for cultural diversity, social justice and equality. She also shares her life with her husband and 5 children. Her bio says: "Mariam speaks English, Somali, Swahili and & Arabic, and in all languages she speaks her mind."
See: www.mariamissa.com.au, www.raw-australia.org.au