‘A brilliant exploration of wildness in both nature and humankind.’ That's what Alice Winn said about the new book by Cal Flyn. Cal is an award-winning writer from the Highlands of Scotland, and the book is called The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness.

A five-year odyssey she sometimes thought would kill her, Cal travelled the world exploring the concept of wilderness as it ‘shifted from a spiritual notion to an aesthetic and later to an (increasingly controversial) conservation ideal.’ Which led to a critical question, as we go about things like rewilding and the 30 by 30 conservation target, how do we decolonise that ideal, while not losing all it has gained?

Then, having been introduced to the new book, I got even more excited looking over Cal’s back catalogue. Her previous book was the award-winning best-seller, Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape. What a collection of stories that was too. And out of both books, Cal says ‘coming out hopeful was a surprise to me.’

But we start with her first book, being on her harrowing connection with Australia. Thicker Than Water emerged as she traced the path of a distant relative who became fêted as a pioneer hero in Australia, but has more recently been implicated as ringleader of a number of brutal massacres of the Gunai Aboriginal people.

We talk about all this, the telling connections across some of her most extraordinary encounters, and what Cal’s found in herself, the rest of us, and the rest of nature, that continues to surprise and inspire.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 4 June 2026.

Title image of Cal sourced from The Guardian.

Music:

Scotland Mountains, by Angel Salazar (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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A plant that gives you salt and sugar. A forest “supermarket without the bills.” And a business model that treats farmers, foragers, and fishers like artists with a world stage, not beneficiaries waiting for help. We’re live at the 2026 Grounded Festival in the Otways with Helianti Hilman, founder of Javara, following her mission to help revive Indonesia’s rich food culture and turn food biodiversity into dignified livelihoods.

We talk terroir across an archipelago of landscapes and 1,300 ethnic groups, and what traditional knowledge still holds: slow cooking methods that protect nutrition, hyper-local souring agents and herbs, and delicious ingredients that serve many different functions. Helianti shares vivid examples, from lower-sodium salt in Papua to spice diversity that challenges what “normal” flavors even mean, plus the practical reality of mapping edible ecosystems without damaging them.

Then we get into the reeds in conversation: commercialisation without extraction. Helianti explains why rarity matters more than volume, how Javara develops processing methods that don’t rely on electricity, and how ancient packaging with no plastic, the right narrative, and traceability help indigenous foods compete on quality instead of pity. We also unpack her “artist manager” approach, the Food Artisan School for rural women and youth, cooperative structures for shared infrastructure and financing, and what hotels chasing ESG standards actually need from local supply chains.

We close with questions on sustainability, access, and intellectual property, including the limits of protecting traditional knowledge through trademarks and geographical indication, and why “food is medicine” isn’t a trend but a daily practice embedded in spices, herbs, and low-glycemic palm sugars. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a friend, and leave a rating or review so more people can find the work.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 22 April 2026.

Title image by Alan Benson.

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

Nicole Masters, live in conversation at Grounded for episode 307.

Liz Carlisle on the living ancient roots of regeneration and its healing ground for episode 309 last week.

Music:

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

This is somewhat of a momentous occasion. Liz Carlisle wrote a book called Healing Grounds a few years ago, and a listener brought it to my attention. Just as it was for Liz, it’s been really significant for me. Initially setting out to test regenerative agriculture’s claims on carbon and climate restoration, a bigger picture opened up. And a line from the last page has stayed with me since – ‘this is ancestor work’. Longer term listeners will have heard me recall it a bit on this podcast. It even came up in the recent chat with Nicole Masters at Grounded Festival, such is its synergy with where so many others seem to be finding themselves. And it's our starting point here.

Liz also has a new book out, a compilation with dozens of amazing stories and contributors, co-edited with Aubrey Streit Krug of The Land Institute. It’s called Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods (global release here). While Healing Grounds is also coming out in paperback, with a new foreword.

These are works so full of everything we need and could benefit from more right now. Successes, joys and wisdom, transcending impasses, traumas and would-be divides.

And it’s all somewhat presciently evidenced in the songs Liz wrote and performed as a young touring musician, some of which she kindly shares with us here. That was before that life led her to this one, via a job with farmer and new Senator at the time, Jon Tester.

Her work now also includes being an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming to a growing, ready and bold student cohort of thousands.

Here Liz shares her Dust Bowl lineage, the pain of disconnection from farming, and the way each layer of understanding gets deeper than tools or inputs. Regeneration, she argues, is tied to Indigenous stewardship and to food traditions carried through diaspora, and it only works at the scale of the climate crisis if it is equitable for people as well as healthy for soil. That takes us into the hard, practical questions: land ownership, short leases, monocultures, and the policy machinery that keeps farmers locked into systems that are brittle under climate change and biodiversity loss.

We also talk about what’s possible and happening right now, in that context. We talk land trusts, commons-based models, cultural access agreements, and Indigenous land return, plus why perennials matter so much for climate resilience and soil carbon stability. Living Roots brings the concept to life through stories of serviceberries, agroforestry, prairie strips in the Midwest, and the remembering of perennial grains that reframes “innovation” as cultural memory.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 17 June 2026.

Music: Feels Like Home, The Water Is Wide, and Montana, all by Liz Carlisle.

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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, 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!