Fire, food, and the future come together in this conversation about relearning forgotten skills we need in the modern world. We explore permaculture, regenerative farming, seeds, and cycles, as well as six seasons of activities that people can do to nourish, create, feast, ritualize, and localize. 

Jade Miles is a regenerative heritage fruit farmer. Together with her husband and three kids, Jade runs Black Barn Farm, a biodiverse orchard, nursery and workshop space in Northeast Victoria, Australia. She is the author of Futuresteading: Live like tomorrow matters and Huddle: Wisdom, skills and recipes for building a tomorrow of togetherness.

This conversation is about challenging an anesthetized numbness, and instead living differently through embracing old and new skills, and building community. We are not designed to be cogs in an industrialized machine but rather we are a custodial species.

We all have times of silence — when momentum slows down, we turn inwards, or we cannot rush and produce. Taking times of silence can be one essential tool for restoring our energy and then changing how we are directing that energy: to confront a machine of oppression and extraction; nurture our communities and projects; or rebuild how we want to live.

Guest Steven Lovatt is a birder, writer, critic, parent, and teacher based in South Wales. He authored Birdsong in a Time of Silence, detailing the life of his young family through the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when he rekindled a childhood love for birds, as well as the awareness of the birds who are no longer here.

This conversation ranges from poetry to parenting, and asks about that which is endangered in our society beyond birds. We dig deep into the roots of being human, and talk about imagination - one of those fruits that comes from times of silence.

This mini-documentary chronicles the journey of host Alice Irene Whittaker in 2019, when she traveled pregnant with her third child to Colorado to interview acclaimed, award-winning environmental economist and regenerative rancher Hunter Lovins.

Around a kitchen table in her regenerative ranch, Hunter answers curiosities about a circular economy that is modelled on nature’s cycles, and envisions the large-scale transition to renewable energy and ecologically-responsible business. Hunter reflects on her lived and professional experience in transforming landscapes and soil through regenerative agriculture.

A moment in time between two women is captured in this thought-provoking conversation that unfolds surrounded by horses, the homes of herons, and wide open sky. This episode challenges economic growth as a concept, dreams of the demise of the fossil fuel industry, and encourages designing an economy that fosters happiness and well-being.