Reskillience

We built this city on rock n roll! And cheap oil. And it’s currently running out… so what happens now? This week I chat with Nathan Surendran to get a foothold on the fossil fuel crisis (which is the Everything Crisis) and how we can keep our balance, together. Nathan is a systems thinker, recovering engineer, energy and security analyst, policy advisor, author of the Energy and Resilience substack and chair of the Wise Response society. He is also seriously kind, and provides so much practical, empowering advice in this convo, including:
Moving far far away from civilisation
The unsustainability of cities
Neurodivergence leading to deep research
The Energy Elephant in the room: WHAT AREN’T WE SEEING
Why oil (diesel) is the lifeblood of industrial society
Drawing down ancient sunlight 1 million times faster than it’s being recharged
Every calorie of food takes 10 calories of fossil fuels, oof
The Iran War
Why we can’t just switch to renewables
Right relationship with renewables
What are baseline standards of living?
Household appliance heroes for the energy descent
What is Energy Blindness?
Emotionally processing peak oil
One barrel of oil = 5 years of human labour (!)
Are we being gaslit about the situation in the strait?
The industrial system schools us to comply, not think
Why the rich aren’t as protected as they might think
Less affluent people are ahead of the game
What is mutual aid?
Un-pathologising co-dependence
Maori concepts of community care
Why we need danger from a mental health perspective
🧙‍♀️LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️
Nathan on Substack ~ Energy and Resilience
Nathan’s home on the web
[doc] When The Trucks Stop ~ mutual aid guidelines
Wise Response on Substack
Jason Bradford ~ The Future Is Rural
Steve Keene
Ian McGilchrist
Charlie Hoyle
Nate Hagens
Steve Keen
Howard T Odum
📸 Photo credit: Jason Hosking
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Ever wish you could sit down with permie elders to hear their take on the current chaos; what to do, where to live, and whether it’s really that bad in the grand scheme of things? Well just call me Genie cos this convo with permaculture educators and radical homemakers Ian Lillington and Marita Zeh will deliver.
Ian and Marita live in a solar passive straw-bale home on the edge of Castlemaine, Victoria, surrounded by fruit and nut trees and veggie gardens, where students come to see – and feel – what it is to be wrapped in abundance. And this is where I found them, on a sunny autumn morning, in the cosy warmth of their kitchen, dealing with masses of peaches, pistachios and zucchini. And we all sat down and chopped and chatted, eventually remembering to turn on the mics.
In this convo:
Pursuing a hybrid model of permaculture
Rat poison sandwich
Renting till your 40s
What is good debt?
Where is even affordable anymore?
How to deal with gluts
Giving to community
Small garden farming
Being strategically connected to the grid
Diverse household energy systems
Scales of usage
An elder’s perspective on current affairs
Sharing permaculture as a political act
Permaculture priorities
Gratitude vs. fear
Impermaculture
🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️
Send Ian an email ~ [email protected]
Or keep it old school with a text ~ 0478 297 057
The Castlemaine Permaculture Hub PDC
(for locals) Castlemaine Permaculture FB group
(national) Permaculture Australia FB group

I tell a story about my grandpa’s deathbed song request before having a heart-to-heart with Emily Coats, a deep nature connection facilitator, ancestral skills practitioner, threshold-crossing guide and dreamworker.
In this convo:
Shakespearean activism
What the world needs right now (hint: not more intellect)
Ways to wholeness
Does activism have to feel hard and gnarly?
Being precise in the ripples we cast
What happens at Tracker School
Ancient skills… for survival?
Why to prioritise spiritual preparedness
How we live and how we die
Losing her dad; the gifts and lessons
Intentions vs. realities of living in a handmade black wattle shelter offline, offgrid and alone for 7.5 months
How to use spirit tracking to find lost stuff
🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙‍♀️
[starts soon in Naarm] Earth Time: The Lost Art of Being Human
Emily’s home on the web
Emily on Instagram
Nature's Apprentice
Nature Based Leadership Training
Bill Plotkin & Animas Valley Institute
Jon Young
The Animal Communicator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBpG1nkM5jc
Jon Young Australia workshop
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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 farmer, writing folk songs and considering having kids.
*Jem happily identifies as a doomster
🎙️ In this convo
Experiencing climate change first hand as a farmer in Bali
How to act on knowledge about collapse and climate?
Making the leap towards your values (with the help of a global pandemic)
Why the wellness community is full of shit
Farming fails
Picking up music at 48 and writing comedy rock
Faulty beliefs we have about our creative gifts
Living fully at the eleventh hour
Letting go of status and security
Why it’s all ok when everything’s not ok
Kirtan and ecospirituality practices
Jem’s evolving views about how collapse will unfold
Bringing kids into this world, yay or nay?
The Deep Adaptation framework
Becoming NURTURANT
How to help others through the grief
Jem’s simple pleasures
Oracle cards for cynics
🧙‍♀️LINKY POOS
Jem’s home on the web
[paper] Deep Adaptation ~ Jem Bendell
[book] Breaking Together ~ Jem Bendell
The Metacrisis Initiative
Jem’s collapse-aware oracle cards
Jem’s music
Songbird credit: Australia Outback Birds by EduFigueres License: Attribution 4.0
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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 it feels to break free from the global industrial food system
Why Robin is not into human optimisation
Practicing non-attachment and impermanence
Freedom in community
What gives Robin the power to do crazy stuff?
Non-delusionalism
How to identify your purpose and niche
The most limiting factor in figuring out who you really are
Pursuing radical honesty
Robin’s simple finances
Skills + relationships = freedom
Transition ethics
Compassionate communication
What IS foraging, really?
All the foraging nuances you never thought about!
How our language is built around disconnection
What would happen if everyone foraged?
Joy as resistance
🧙‍♀️ LINKY POOS
Robin’s website
Robin’s books
Robin on Instagram
[book] Mark Boyle ~ The Moneyless Man
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