Ep 142 Charlie McGee from Formidable Vegetable - Winter Windbacks 2024

Charlie Mgee -- permaculture troubadour and Formidable Vegetable frontman -- composes swingin' tunes on a ukulele that address climate change, food security and regenerative sustainable living.

From 'energy-descent electroswing' to 'post-apocalypso', his unforgettable music provides permaculture earworms that entertain and educate. Maybe you're humming one right now?

In this energetic convo, we quiz Charlie about the role of art and creativity in changemaking; how music has a knack for bridging gaps and delivering powerful messages through melody. Charlie talks about his childhood in the bush, his wandering spirit, what it's like living in a tiny house at Melliodora with Brenna Quinlan, and his vision for a more beautiful world.

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SHOW NOTES

• Hight energy artistic life in a tiny house with Brenna Quinlan
• Stories from permie childhood 
• Why chickens are a gateway drug into alternative living
• Finding ways of synthesising complex concepts and making them accessible 
• All pervasive gratitude 
• A pledge to stop flying & touring Australia in biodiesel converted van
• Coping with covid by understanding joy and grief are two sides of the same coin
• Acknowledging the hard stuff to build the good stuff
• Individual vision post covid lockdown 
• Daily life at Melliodora
• Pushing against the treadmill to move towards intentional simplicity
• Being OK to be a bit different 
• Managing multiple communities in your life
• The accidental creation of an annual festival
• Yearning for a deeper connection to place
• Avoiding tribalism 
• Staying open minded to ensure a rounded world view
• Seeing all of life as equal to oneself
• Listening more and talking less
• The risk of being interpreted as a dogmatic idealist who will show us all the way
• Think global, act local
• How music and the arts is the ultimate universal language 
• Why he doesn’t copyright his music
• The power of regenerative creativity - how we imagine the world
• Go hug a tree! 

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Formidable Vegetable on Instagram
• Formidable Vegetable online
• Melliodora
• David Holmgren's Retrosuburbia
• Brenna Quinlan on Instagram
• Charles Eisenstein - The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
• The Patterning Instinct - Jeremy Lent
• Support this podcast by shouting us a cuppa

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