A life on the edge can sharpen your senses. That’s the unmistakable feeling of hearing Allan Savory recount the untold stories in and around Unsavory, his new memoir spanning childhood, wildlife, war, political exile, and the birth of Holistic Management - the extraordinary global movement regenerating the world’s grasslands, and by extension, everything else.

Allan shares why he resisted writing a memoir and what changed, largely thanks to Jody Butterfield, former journalist wife of over 40 years, and co-founder of the Savory Institute and the Africa Centre for Holistic Management; and Bobby Gill, SI’s Director of Development and Communications, and self-described ‘reformed biomedical engineer turned systems thinker’, prompted by his time as lead scientific reviewer for the US FDA.

The conversation weaves personal turning points with systemic insights: exile in the Caymans and a home emptied; the unlikely, letter-born partnership with Jody; field intuition that saved lives; and the hard-won habit of swallowing bitter pills early to hasten a path to wisdom.

This story isn’t a promise of a silver bullet, but a way to proceed. We also talk about what it would take for one government to model a statesmanlike pivot that others can follow. There’s levity too - army pranks, 'the red dress', cricket framing life, and death - and we close with a moving reading of Kipling’s If.

Now the book is out in the world, I asked Allan, Jody and Bobby, if they would gather with me to talk about it – Allan and Jody from Zimbabwe, and Bobby from Spain.

If this conversation moved you, share it with someone who influences land, policy, or capital. Follow for more and leave a review so others can find it.

Allan in one of this pod's most popular eps.

Allan’s TED talk with 9 million views.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 23 February 2026.

Music:

Call Me Voodoo, by Mooveka (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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TWO PLACES HAVE OPENED UP - Apply now to join us for Confluence 2026, a canoe journey on the spectacular Murray River, Australia, 21-29 March.

Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (from Artlist).

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The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!

Now for something a bit different, and really special. Today we’re off to seaside Maine, in the far north east of the US, to visit Rachel Carson’s summer cottage. Here was where Rachel wrote much of her last few books. It was a place she loved, and where she also soaked up her last days in Maine with best friend Dorothy.

It did feel like something of a pilgrimage, visiting the spirit of the woman who is regarded as pivotal in launching the modern environmental movement, with her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring. A response to her dismay and outrage at the impact of pesticides on human and environmental health, it was written, and then defended, under all sorts of ill-considered industry and bureaucratic attacks, while she herself had become ill with cancer.

She actually wrote plenty of other world-shaping stuff before that too. Rachel was a marine biologist whose best-selling sea trilogy preceded Silent Spring. But it was the latter that met the moment like few books have, and shaped generations. Still.

So it was that after visiting Chloe Maxmin and Bill Pluecker ahead of their wonderful successes in the 2024 elections, we headed off along the Sheepscot River a little south, to the place Rachel built ahead of writing her third sea trilogy book, ‘The Edge of the Sea’. This is where we start. And where we finish? Well, let’s just say there was some magic about that day, back in the Fall of ‘24.

Chapter markers (with accompanying images) & transcript.

Rachel Carson Council.

Robert Musil’s piece on Rachel’s cottage.

Recorded 9 September 2024.

Title image: the magazine cover at the Inn.

Join us at Grounded Festival in April (10% discount for paid subscribers).

Support the Strathbogie Disaster Relief Fund, set up by podcast supporters.

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting li

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TWO PLACES HAVE OPENED UP - Apply now to join us for Confluence 2026, a canoe journey on the spectacular Murray River, Australia, 21-29 March.

Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (from Artlist).

Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!

A line of turbulence marks the edge of a burn scar, and the plane starts to buck. That jolt becomes a metaphor for the entire conversation: when we strip biology, we disrupt wind, heat, and water. Restore it, and everything changes. We link Perth to the wet season Kimberley and a bright winter’s day in Beijing to ask a practical question with planetary stakes: how do we turn knowledge into actual regeneration?

Filmmaker and restoration catalyst John D. Liu joins Kachana Station’s Chris Henggeler to map a path from storytelling to soil building. John lays out a simple physics of living systems—grow organic matter, raise canopy height, and infiltrate every drop to repair the lower hydrological cycle and cool the land. Chris brings the Kimberley into focus: lightning seasons, split-second fire calls, and the creation of microclimates through tight management. Together they propose Kachana as a living laboratory and virtual university—open to researchers, engineers, and restoration communities.

We update you on the donkey controversy and opportunity still alive, and hear the call for evidence-based policy that aligns regulation with how soft systems self-regulate. We explore the remarkable rise (and unexpected beginning) of Ecosystem Restoration Communities, why peer-to-peer learning scales faster than conferences, and how true wealth should be tied to functional ecosystems and healthy watersheds. From canopy height to hydrological function, from policy design to ethical investment, from daily fieldwork to music and shared meals, this is a blueprint for turning concern into coordinated action.

Note: the Australian Story episode on Kachana has now eclipsed 1.5m views. And this episode celebrates the International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 12 February 2026.

Join us at Grounded Festival (10% discount for paid subscribers).

Join the wait list for the Murray River Confluence.

Music:

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

And John on guitar.

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Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!

We’re off to Parliament House in Canberra today. But don’t let that put you off. Hot off the press, the Regenerative Food & Farming Alliance (RFFA) has just launched there.

The Alliance has been brought together with many a guest on this podcast over the years. Though one woman behind it all – and so much else – is someone I have been looking forward to having on the podcast since we met a few years ago. Rebecca Gorman is a highly respected former journalist turned farmer, philanthropist and company director, and she has been a key figure in convening the new Alliance.

We speak about the launch, the Alliance of course, the appetite for it, Rebecca's fascinating back story bringing her to this moment, even some initial reticence to this path, some varied influences, what she's seen work over the decades, how the Alliance will work, what's next, how we can back it in, the extraordinary hidden costs of the current systems, and full circle to how it feels for Rebecca to find herself here in the light of some early heartbreaks in life, and how that has spurred her connections with First Nations peoples. And she sings for us at the end, in honour of some other passions in life.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 11 February 2026.

Title image sourced here.

Please support the Strathbogie Disaster Relief Fund, hosted by the Australian Communities Foundation.

Join us at the next Grounded Festival in April (10% discount on offer for paid subscribers on Patreon or Substack).

Join the wait list for the Murray River Confluence journey.

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

Music:

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

Send a text

Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!

Welcome to the 10th year of the podcast! And thank you. As an entirely listener supported show, it only happens thanks to listeners like you.

To start off the year, another form of thanks, and tribute, to a guest from 2023 who was so wonderful, as much for his brilliance as his grace. I’m talking of the late Manchán Magan, acclaimed Irish travel writer, documentary maker, radio producer, theatre performer, builder of the first straw-bale house in Ireland, regenerator of the 10 acre block it stands on, and best-selling author. Manchán died in October last year at an age not too senior to mine, just a couple of months after a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Beautifully, I’ve learned he and long-term partner Aisling married a few weeks before he died. Aisling described how they fell in love too, as she later posthumously accepted the Best Irish-Published Book of the Year award for Manchán's latest work ‘Ninety-Nine Words for Rain (and One for Sun)’. You can find that story here.

Manchán and I signed off our podcast chat looking forward to meeting, given the various threads emerging at the time, including tracing more of my roots back to Ireland, and the connections between those roots and Aboriginal cultures and Country here - so a little slice of me cut away with the news too. But what a blessing to have had that yarn. Thanks Manchán for your fleeting but unforgettable presence in my life. And of course, for being so much more for so many more people all over the place. That, no doubt, will continue on. Right now, in fact.

For here are the last 25 minutes or so of my conversation with Manchán from a couple of years ago. So much to love in just this small window.

To listen to the full episode with Manchán, and find further links, head to episode 173. Recorded with thanks to the Derby Aboriginal Media Corporation, at 6DBY deadly Derby radio in the West Kimberley, on the heels of the Aboriginal Irish festival in Fremantle WA.

Title image source.

Chapters and transcripts.

Music: The Blackbird (Irish Song Dance), by Ennis, Morrison and Muller (from Artlist).

Thanks again for listening, and for supporting The RegenNarration.

Send us a text

Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!

Just one final highlight from last year, before we kick off the new series. Well, it was actually from 2024, but an excerpt of it was played last year, when the latest book from 5x New York Times best-selling author and friend, Paul Hawken, was released - Carbon: The Book of Life.

That 2024 episode and 2025 excerpt featured Paul doing a world premiere reading of the final passage of the book, in his sun-drenched garden in northern California. Today, the last minute of that reading, for your pure listening pleasure.

If you’re inspired to listen to more, or to revisit the rest of our conversation, you’ll find it at episode 204.

Title image: Paul in the garden (pic: Olivia Cheng)

To access all episodes, including the full 2025 highlights package in ep 289, head to the website (where there’ll often be photos with each episode), or wherever you get your podcasts.

With thanks to our wonderful guests and the musicians who generously granted permission for their music to be heard here.

And thanks for listening and supporting the podcast!

Next up, the new series for 2026 ...

Chapter markers

Send us a text

Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!

Ok, just a couple more bite size highlights from last year. Well, this one was actually from a few years ago, but an excerpt of it was played last year - titled A Laugh, a Cry and a Touchstone Moment, featuring Tyson Yunkaporta. And indeed, this passage in particular might still be the most moving and funny of the entire podcast. Certainly, the opening gambit has continued to come up in conversation ever since.

Tyson belongs to the Apalech Clan from Western Cape York in far north Queensland, with community/cultural ties all over Australia. He is the author multiple books, including Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. He’s also a poet and artist carving traditional tools and weapons, processes that were central to writing the book.

If you’d like to hear or revisit our conversation in full, head to episode 70 – ‘Sand Talk: Indigenous thinking, saving the world & living creation’ (there are a bunch of links in those show notes too, and a very special photo from this conversation on that episode website).

Title image: Tyson Yunkaporta (supplied)

To access all episodes, including the full 2025 highlights package in ep 289, head to the website (where there’ll often be photos with each episode), or wherever you get your podcasts.

With thanks to our wonderful guests and the musicians who generously granted permission for their music to be heard here.

And thanks for listening and supporting the podcast!

Chapter markers

Send us a text

Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!

Our curtain-raiser series of bite size highlights drawn from the 2025 wrap up episode concludes with this incredibly special and personal group of episodes, from the heart of Mayan culture, Guatemala, Central America.

This was actually the first series recorded in 2025, but took a lot more time to produce given the episodes released in both Spanish and English. And it was so worth it.

Here are the voices, places and tunes you're hearing:

0m - Salta Montes, by Migra (from Artlist) (eps 285-8)

0.21 - Patrik Mucía (ep 285 and in Spanish), at IMAP, by Lago de Atitlán

0.59 - Don Ceferino de Paz González (ep 286 and in Spanish), Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Alta Verapaz

1.24 - Cándido Reyes (ep 287 and in Spanish), La Nueva Libertad

1.40 - Aníbal de Paz (ep 288 and in Spanish), Lago Petén Itzá

2.06 - Regeneration, by Amelia Barden (theme music)

3.25 - Out-take with my translator in Baltimore, Dana Scott

Title image: view of the nearby volcano from the tour at IMAP (pic: Olivia Cheng)

To access all episodes, including the full 2025 highlights package in ep 289, head to the website (where there’ll often be photos with each episode), or wherever you get your podcasts.

With thanks to our wonderful guests and the musicians who generously granted permission for their music to be heard here.

And thanks for listening and supporting the podcast!

Chapter markers

Send us a text

Support the show

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep the show on the road - and gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find my writing).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event, and even The RegenNarration shop. And thanks for sharing with friends!