Reskillience

In 2018 Professor Jem Bendell published an academic paper that went viral; pretty weird for a piece of scholarly writing. The topic? Societal collapse caused by runaway climate change. The timeline? Soon. Deep Adaptation presented a frank, delusion-free framework for facing the end of the world as we know it, sparked a movement, and copped a lot of flack.

I wanted to chat with Jem not so much about the grim facts but about how, “as that collapse guy”*, he is filling his life with meaning at the eleventh hour. And it turns out, that includes becoming a farm...

I tell a story about Jar Power before sitting down with Robin Greenfield, an incredible fella best known for his radical experiments in simple living, food reclamation, waste minimisation and wild foraging.

He has been called “the Robin Hood of our times”, “the Forrest Gump of ecology”, and “the best kind of crazy”. To me, Robin is a torch bearer for truth, leading the way towards justice – with a whole lotta joy and integrity.

This year he is eating 100% foraged foods – unreal! – so we chat about that, as well as:

Why Robin is so gassy

How...

Christie Green spends days at a time in the mountains, in the snow, tracking elk, solo. Her hunting journey began at 40 as a practical way to feed herself and her family, and became a fierce and fluid exploration of womanhood, motherhood, stewardship, intuition, listening and kinship. Christie wrote a memoir about her experiences called Moonlight Elk that I rapturously devoured, licking my fingertips with every turn of the page, it is that delicious. 

🦌 Terrain covered:

Life in Sante Fe, New Mexico

Hunting as a deep and embodied exploration of just about everything.

Li...

You’ve heard of swales… but what about swales in the brain to slow and deepen our human experience? Join me and Cecilia Macaulay for one of those special convos that gets to the heart of life’s gnarliest struggles; our biggest messes, our greatest failures, our everyday chaos… and uses permaculture design to harness their power.

This episode will particularly chime with “forgetful, distractible” types, clutter accumulators, chaos agents, overwhelm junkies, and anyone with a hunch that a few elegant household systems could MASSIVELY increase their effectiveness in the world.

WE COVER

Insane wisdo...

Big personal shares at the top of the ep (preview: podcasting terrifies me) before an utterly delightful conversation with Scots folk singer Josie Vallely aka. Quinie.

Quinie's album Forefowk, Mind Me was named The Guardian's best folk release of 2025, but don't worry if you're not into bagpipes because we mostly chat about:

Not making your art your career

Tips for slow art/seasonal living in a rushing world

The mind bending differences between relating with Country in Australia versus Scotland

Minority languages and evocation of place

The...

A garden drama unfolds during a heatwave, and I share my summer solstice/New Year wishes for you.

Thanks for tuning into another year of Reskillience! We'll be back later in January full of fresh questions and custard. 

Shout out to my love Jordan Osmond for helping produce this episode.

Sound credit: BlackbirdFiltered.wav by acclivity 

🧡 Support Reskillience on Patreon 🧡

Cor blimey, we're getting equiney! Cast aside your Saddle Club trauma and learn how horses can help us be better humans and stewards of nature in this rich convo with Lisa Podosin.

Lisa is a horse listener, advocate and author who swapped Hollywood for a tiny home on shared land with a herd of seven horses. We get real deep on topics of:

🐴 not putting off till retirement what you wanna do today

🐴 choosing freedom over security at any age

🐴 land sharing gifts and tips (single women supporting women!)

🐴 how horses a...

You want it, you got it: an open discussion about the cracks in our civilisation, and how to catch each other when it all falls apart.

Dave Pollard has been writing about culture, complexity, deep ecology and collapse for longer than some of us have been alive. While he continues to cheer on radical ‘deep green’ activists, he no longer believes that that we can change or reform The System. This convo is about what to do instead.

[first aired in 2023]

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Dave's writings

Dave’s recommended reading list ~ The Books That Ha...

Could you live without money? No support payments, no savings account, no secret benefactors? 

Jo Nemeth has been doing so for the past decade, and reckons she is less stressed and more secure in her moneyless life (in which she shares a home with eight other humans and plays the role of house keeper/manager/grower/frugavore). 

This is a truly radical tale of a woman who went the whole hog and gave up the bacon 💰 to invest in relationships and reciprocity. We cover:

What is poverty/wealth?

Why live without money...

I tell a story about becoming a gardening influencer before sharing an animated and long-awaited conversation with David Trood aka. The Weedy Gardener!  

Weedy, Jord and I discuss:

🌱 Creative land access

🌱 Body as compost

🌱 Hearing nature's call

🌱 Being an eye cell for humanity

🌱 Showing your failures

🌱 Why to love the small stuff

🌱 The all important nutrient cycle

🌱 Decomposing cane toad

🌱 Pest management, the Viking way

🌱 Rhizophagy

🌱 Nitty gritty on why organic produce is healthier

🌱 From grandpa bod to garden god...

I tell a story about the ironic demise of my keepcup, and the difference between light green and deep green choices, before a pot-of-tea-convo with Laura Jean. Laura is a renegade business coach, dietician and permaculturalist who will help you see VALUES in a whole new light, and how to use them to illuminate the life/business/world you really want. Prepare to cry tears of recognition and possibility.

🐝 Building trust in yourself for changes that take courage

🐝 Eating disorder shares and healing strategies

🐝 The very worst thing that can possibly happen

🐝 Body...

Three unbelievable stories about owls, and how to be a myceliating, possibilitarian practivist with the phenomenal Morag Gamble.

Morag has cornflower blue eyes and a glorious crop of hair that curls at the ends like pea shoots. She consorts with broad beans and leafy greens in bare feet, and has sent no dig gardening viral on YouTube.

This convo was recorded at Crystal Waters Eco Village where Morag lives with her family and 200+ other humans on 640 acres shared with a teeming assortment of subtropical wildlife.

📝 SHOW NOTES

Building your livelihood around the...

Can birdsong heal your hearing? Can a rainforest recruit humans to protect it? What is deep ecology, anyway?

Of all the approaches to “saving the world”, this one has my heart. Join me in conversation with elder John Seed as we get to the marrow of the environmental crisis, from the illusion of separation between human beings and nature, to the rituals, ceremonies and stories that can heal it.

About John Seed

Just last year at age 79 John was arrested for strapping himself to logging machinery in the Bulga State Forest, and has been...

Friends! Here’s a D&M (Dharma & Meditation) conversation I recorded with mindfulness meditation teacher and founder of Australian Parents for Climate Action Suzie Brown while visiting Narara Eco Village last week. 

If you’ve ever felt anxious, unsure how to process difficult/obstinate emotions, or sad for no reason, this episode will provide ample tools for stilling the mind and relating to yourself – and the world – with kindness. 

On that note, I start the ep with an emo travel diary entry, and how a snaggy creek helped me see my internal struggles in a whole new...

It's the RESKILLIENCE ROADTRIP where I'm intercepting all sorts of good sorts along Australia's east coast!

First up is Ceilidh Meo who teaches no less than 80 apocalypse skills (!!!) while also growing olives, shoring up the food system and being casually shamanic.

This is a ROMP of a convo that is INSPIRING ME TO USE CAPS. Such fun. Such depth. 

I also share about the caravan park we've just checked into.

🔥 WITHIN 

GEEK OUT ON MICRO NICHE OLIVE PRESSING

An antidote to the olive oil crisis

Coope...

It's a Jordan + Catie double bill for the Season Four finale 🎊  

Join us for a fireside D&M as two humans just tryna digest the microplastic casserole of modernity… and make something better. 

You’ll hear about my secret storytelling anxiety, Jord’s new award nominated film, my other boyfriends, law breaking, roadkill harvesting, why we took the Good Death-i-vore Pledge, sacred hunting, how to really give a shit about your ecosystem AAAAAND turning baboozlement into useful skills. 

⚠️ A warning for sensitive ears, we swear a lot in this episode.

LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

...

I share a recipe for de-zombifying your life before chatting with Imogen Ive, Director at Mittagundi – a remote 520 acre farm and off grid education centre built by and for young folks in the high country. This convo is a reminder that sometimes hard is good, together is better and a pack horse, tent and sense of adventure beats air conditioned comfort any day.

In the conversational cauldron:

🍯 Setting up a working farm and outdoor ed centre in the middle of nowhere

🍯 Living without modern comforts, electric tools, phones or watches

🍯 Wilderness adventures...

Shrug off the cloak of secrecy and awkwardness around death with palliative care nurse Pippa White. I’ve been wanting to bring a death convo to the airwaves for ages, because there’s a huge imbalance between light/dark, above/below, waxing/waning, growth/decay, possessing/relinquishing energies in our culture (and I'm the first person to perpetuate it). Shout out to everyone who sent frank and thoughtful questions for Pippa to answer – you’ll hear them towards the end of the ep.

Pippa White is a palliative care nurse and death care advocate and educator in the Anth...

Do not listen to this unless you want to reawaken your dormant farming desires and throw yourself into a life on the land. I tell a story about being a grub, before having an animated chat with rural woman of the year Katie Finlay about staunching the loss of small farms in Australia and supporting emerging growers to step up – even and especially if they don’t own land. (What even is land ownership?) 

🍎 AND ALSO

Katie and Hugh Finlay are black belt orchardists whose online program Grow Great Fruit is just brilliant for anyone who want...

It’s colder than a penguin’s big toe here in Djaara Country, so we’re cosying up by the fire for a yarn with Gareth Devenish. I call Gareth the Snoop Dogg of permaculture, he calls himself a sovereign man walking in Country, subject to natural lore, seeking a connection with the cosmos. Call off your obligations for the next hour because Gareth’s crackling mix of irreverence and truth telling is something really special.

🔥 How to yarn

🔥 Why land ownership is a furphy

🔥 Native vs. exotic trees and colonial malaise

🔥 What is our r...

I tell a story about making bugger all money but feeling filthy rich, before being joined by the incredible Linda Cockburn (pronounced “Co’burn” cos it’s Scottish) who explains why Capitalism is a death cult, and ways to crowd it out with reciprocity. Ample brain fodder and fiery inspiration here, folks! 

We cover:

🪶 Being unmade by successive tragedies.

🪶 Quitting employment to work in the home economy.

🪶 Going six months without spending a dollar.

🪶 How to grow your own toilet paper!

🪶 Will politicians ever “solve” climate change?

🪶 Why you can’t questio...

Hello! I have been away in the bush for three days and three nights with just a tarp, sleeping bag and water to my name. No tent, no pillow, no torch, NO BREAKFAST. Off the back of this deeply moving ritual (which I'll tell you about soon), I wanted to release this equally as moving and foresty interview with Tessa Campisi.

Tessa is a writer, poet, audio visual artist, activist and radio host who speaks with the timbre of an old growth tree and tells stories that will rustle your leaves. 

In this chat:

Me ranting about Couple Power and the Urban Nanna being brilliant. May all the single, neurospicy permies find ample inspiration in today’s interview with Anna Matilda! Teacher of traditional skills, crafts and non-judgey sustainability. Anna is a breath of fresh air in the stale bedchamber of the status quo, sharing openly about how she does permaculture solo, in the city, in a rental property, with limited energy and Captain Anxiety occasionally taking the wheel.

Mistakes as teachers

Out ya come, Captain Anxiety

Feeling out of step with the whole world

Th...

Today we're exploding the sanctity of heirloom seeds and exploring the world of adaptive gardening! Gregg Mueller is here to tell us how (and why) to breed wacky new varieties of veggies like red snow peas, rainbow carrots and miniature melons in the name of climate-proof food. We also talk about seed monopolies and sovereignty, open source seeds, permaculture pitfalls aaaaaand sad and depressed garlic with no sex drive.

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS

Gregg’s seed shop ~ Useful Seeds

Gregg on Instagram

Gregg on Facebook

The Open Source Seed Initiative

The Centr...

It’s Permaculture Week, friends and phascogales! And what better way to celebrate than  a big old heart to heart with permie elder Linda Woodrow. Linda is the author of 470, The Permaculture Home Garden, and the Witches Kitchen blog which is now in its 17th year. She is humble and extraordinary, and I think you’ll dig what she has to say about finding our niches, neighbours, purpose and freedom in the throes of collapse.

🧙‍♀️LINKY POOS

Linda Woodrow’s home on the web

Linda Woodrow’s blog The Witches Kitchen

470 ~ Linda Woodrow

A story about a free bottle of French perfume and whether sensitivity makes us more or less resilient. With esteemed and ever-so-lucid naturopath, herbalist & author Anthia Koullouros of Apothēca Organic Teas & Apothecary.

* What’s making us all so sick?

* How to untangle complex & confounding health crises

* Polyvagal theory & nervous system truths

* Practitioner perspectives: holding space for uncertainty

* What a regulated nervous system isn’t

* Resisting business growth & hustle culture

LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

Anthia’s home on the web

Anthia’s Autumn reset [Starts Marc...

One of today’s guests spent seven years spinning a dress from stinging nettles and the other spent five years documenting the process. The result was the incredibly moving documentary The Nettle Dress — which I have now seen twice — co-created by Dylan Howitt and Allan Brown. 

It’s a love letter to old skills, hand crafts and everything that cannot be hurried; to fibersheds, foraged threads, gentle stories, and the magic of following your heart.

Dylan Howitt is a BAFTA nominated filmmaker whose roll call includes BBC, Netflix and Discovery. Allan Brown is a textile artist an...

Today’s subject matter is so slippery and mysterious that even my guest, Dr Maya Ward, finds it hard to describe, though she’s swimming in it. It concerns the aliveness of rivers and the rivers inside us; the nature of reality and realms invisible yet objectively real. It’s about catching the whispers and shouts of the world with pen and paper. It’s shamanic, ecstatic and emphatically esoteric. It’s bloody wild – and I suggest bringing your passport because the places this convo will take you are far out. But also, deep within. If you love all things compl...

Real good fun with this one! Join me and Formidable Vegetable’s kind and charismatic frontman Charlie McGee for a swashbuckling convo about pirate bananas, working the edges, growing up in Arnhem Land, dumpster diving to feed your art, staying in your integrity (while saying yes to flying), the deep discomfort of home ownership and remembering your interconnectedness.

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS

Formidable Vegetable’s home on the web

Grow Do It (Charlie & Brenna's hub of ecological goodness) 

Find secret track Pirate Banana on Formidable Vegetable’s Micro Biome CD, only available in person at gigs!<...

I tell a story about how Jord and I narrowly avoided getting shot before introducing Tanya Loos – local treasure and legendary naturalist – for a deep and meaningful chat about wild life, and all life. We cover:

It's the season three finale with me and my man Jordan Osmond!

We’re cranking the content couple cringe in this convo which covers our individual intentions for 2025, and chatting them through like a pair of old codgers.

Jordan is one half of Happen Films, sharing stories for a more beautiful world, and precisely one year ago we recorded a Reskillience interview which was later to become our first date.

Back with new eps in three weeks or less 💥

Big love to all the legends supporting the show on Patreon

The episode that nearly didn’t happen for reasons almost too embarrassing to share… but what else is the intro for? 🤷‍♀️

Today we’re hanging out with CAROLINE PARKER ~ The Cottage Herbalist ~ bigtime girl crush and quite possibly the love child of a 1950s rock star and wiccan goddess.

Caroline is an author, speaker, grower, educator, forager, herbalist and award-winning teasmith who is just TOO COOL.

We bask in her garden eating elderflower cookies talking about treat-os, herbal speed dating, what to cook when you CBF cooking, the cuppa that Caroline would serve to power hungry...

After countless requests I present to you: Kat Lavers 🐈‍⬛

Wicking buckets, magic bug buttons, interspecies adventures, listener questions and more!

Kat and I recorded this convo at her kitchen table, surrounded by ferments and preserves and garlands of dried chilli.

At just 1/14th of an acre, Kat's urban homestead The Plummery has been known to pump out 428kg of fresh produce in any given year, meeting almost all the fruit/veggie requirements for two people. I M P R E S S I V E  S T U F F.

Kat is a bel...

Are bees a mammal in many bodies?

Why do conventional beehives leave bees cold, stressed and defensive?

How can beekeepers deal with varroa mite without any chemicals?

Do European honeybees even belong in Australia?

What is Australia’s best honey and where to get it?

All this and more in today’s GLORIOUS conversation with leading natural beekeeper Adrian Iodice. Such a special one folks 🐝🐝🐝

LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️

The Beekeeping Naturally website

Adrian on Insta

Adrian’s courses & workshops

Adrian’s Kenyan Top Bar hives

If you prefer nature to people, birdsong to screeching tyres and secretly want to crash the economy via mass workplace dropout due to a bird language contagion, you will go absolutely crackers for this convo.

Andrew Turbill aka. THE BIRD GUY is here to share his epic and somewhat perilous birding quests for 2025, from stalking Logrunners to sidestepping fascists and recording a full blown predator attack in the sky.

F****** fabulous listening for anyone under the spell of birds. 

Andrew’s 2025 to-do list

If you're sick of ham sandwiches and Love Actually, why not bring spear throwing and possum skinning to Chrissy lunch? Eva and Will of Wild Beings have some cracking ideas for rewilding family gatherings -- and every other facet of modern existence, for that matter.

These two intrepid humans lead a radically connected life on/in/with the land, and inspire others to do the same. Tracking, hunting, foraging, tanning, weaving, bush medicine and bird language... this conversation harks back to the OG roots of Reskillience; re-membering that old, wise body of ecological knowledge and running with...

Things to know about this episode:

🪶 It was recorded on Lucy's bedroom floor, smushy carpet under-butt and steaming cups of dandy tea in hand.

🪶 It’s a day spa for your weary weary soul, the one who yearns for alignment between what you love and what you earn.

🪶 It includes a grounding practice & ways to attune to your evolutionary purpose.

🪶 It’s kinda like a personal session with a business strategist, social entrepreneur, poet, writer and regenerator… in podcast form.

🪶 It’s a brave and nuanced take on capitalism, less about poisoning it...

FOR ONCE IT'S NOT A PERMIE 😱

Please enjoy this fun-as-fuck conversation with Blake Boles, who, in an unexpected deviation from regular Reskillience programming, is not a permaculture educator and is in fact a renegade unschooler, vagabonding wordsmith, teen travel leader, bikepacking blogger, tango maestro and passionate spokesperson for the Dirtbag Rich life.

We romp through topics such as quitting school, defying relocalisation, AI playdates, post-app dating and failure resumes. 

🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 

The Dirtbag Rich podcast!

Blake’s home on the web

Dateblake

Blake on Substack

A bit more...

This episode was recorded while sitting on Artist As Family's living room floor, glowing embers in the belly of the fire, cups of hawthorn and artichoke tea on the coffee table, and Meg’s famous ferments watching over us from the shelves. You’ll hear us accidentally knocking the microphones, some quality heavy breathing and Zero the dog dreaming and yipping away on the couch. 

And it's our first audio quartet! Meg, Patrick and twelve-year-old Woody offer their list of ten permaculture neopeasant provocations as a whole family; a huge highlight was hearing Woody share wisdoms from his u...

You already know today's guest. You’ve admired her art, chortled at her pithy permaculture puns and perhaps even listened to her rhyme along with Formidable Vegetable, those eco-funk, full of beans, electro-radish rockers. 

It's the perennially brilliant Brenna Quinlan! Illustrator and educator who brandishes her watercolour brushes at the world’s gnarliest problems, and paints beautiful alternatives.

In this convo:

🪺 All about Brenna & Charlie’s three year build.

🪺 The stories in the walls of their strawbale home.

🪺 Intentional community living.

🪺 Teasing out the finer strands of what brings you joy...