PGAP goes Earthbound with Dan and Johanna McTiernan

Explicit content warning

06/19/22 • 72 min

At PGAP, we have explored many different ideas and facets within the broad realm of Post Growth. Permaculture is a frequent topic on this podcast, so too is behaviour change and nature based spirituality. But what happens if you combine the best of both worlds? For example, the practicality of permaculture principles in conjunction with transpersonal psychology, energy meditation and nature connection facilitation? You get Dan and Johanna McTiernan, co-founders of Earthbound who live and manage a 6 acre homestead on Finland. Johanna and Dan are the guests of this episode of PGAP as we find out more about Earthbound.

Dan McTiernan is a certified transpersonal psychology coach and subtle energy meditation teacher and has been deeply involved in the permaculture movement as a teacher, entrepreneur, writer and homesteader for 15 years.

Johanna McTiernan is a certified subtle energy meditation teacher and a trained nature connection facilitator. With her husband, Dan, she has created permaculture projects including a community supported bakery in the UK, a regenerative olive and almond farm in Spain and a homestead in her native Finland. She is a lifelong seeker of meaning and meeting her family's needs in deep relationship with the land is her passion.

Earthbound, the project Dan and Johanna run, offers 1-1 and group coaching facilitating growth, connection and healing at the fertile edge between transpersonal psychology, embodied meditation & permaculture.

PGAP host Michael Bayliss first met Dan McTiernan through mutual connections with Holistic Activism founder Mark Allen. You can find out more about Holistic Activism here.

Interested in listening to more PGAP episodes on permaculture? You might be interested in the season 3 episode with Shane Simon on Zero Input Agriculture or Season 2 episode with Tania Brooks for our Tasmanian Perspectives mini series of interviews.

Would you prefer to listen to more episodes on behaviour change and spirituality? Our last episode with Paul Collins is a great listen. You might also like to travel back to season 1 for our interview with Darpan.

Did you like this episode of PGAP? Then share it far and wide! Rate and review on Apple Podcast. Subscribe to PGAP here. You can contact us here to let us know your thoughts on this and other episodes and what topics and guests you would like to see for future episodes.

The homepage for PGAP host Michael Bayliss can be found here.

All views and opinions expressed by our guests, including references to their past and present work are totally their own and do not necessarily reflect any views or positions held by Post Growth Australia Podcast.

Special Guests: Johanna McTiernan and Dan McTiernan .

PGAP host Michael Bayliss first met Dan McTiernan through mutual connections with Holistic Activism founder Mark Allen. You can find out more about Holistic Activism here.

The homepage for PGAP host Michael Bayliss can be found here.

Special Guests: Johanna McTiernan and Dan McTiernan .

Previous Episode

A Theological Perspective on Population with Dr Paul Collins

In this episode of PGAP, we talk to Dr Paul Collins, former head of the religion and ethics department in the ABC. He is well known as a commentator on Catholicism and the papacy and also has a strong interest in ethics, environmental and population issues. Paul Collins is also patron of Sustainable Population Australia. Although Christianity is not often renowned in the broader community for its position on reproductive health care or environmental concerns, Paul challenges this presupposition. He is unique in his ability to weave theology into a discourse on environmental centred ethics. PGAP interviewed Paul on the back of his new book “The Depopulation Imperative. How many people can earth support?”

Want to find out more about Paul? Visit his website here. You may also like to watch a short video on Paul from SPA’s meet our patron series.

Want your own copy of the “The Depopulation Imperative?” A link to the book here.

Paul was recently interviewed on ABC Radio National Science Show to promote 'The Depopulation Imperative'. Link to the episode can be found here

Pope Francis’ position on choosing pets over babies as ‘selfish’ was referred to on the episode several times. A link to the article from The Guardian can be found here.

What are your thoughts on the issues raised in this or other episodes of PGAP? Contact us here. Support PGAP by subscribing here and rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Share PGAP among your networks.

This episode of PGAP is made possible from the kind support of Sustainable Population Australia.

The perspectives and positions held by our guests are theirs only, this includes current and past published works. Not all views necessarily reflect those of PGAP.

More information on PGAP host, Michael Bayliss can be found on his website here

Special Guest: Paul Collins.

Next Episode

3 Women 2 Countries 1 Message: World Population Day 2022

World Population Day is approaching on July 11. According to the United Nations Population Fund, ‘8 billion people means 8 billion opportunities’, however many population sustainability advocates are not quite so optimistic. For this episode, PGAP welcome back Karen Shragg, American and Degrowth activist, along with two new guests, Madeline Weld and Valorie Allen from Canada. In this special four way discussion, we explore the similarities and contrasts of the population movement in across our respective countries and unite to shred the myths and misconceptions around population sustainability.

Karen Shragg is a lifelong environmentalist, naturalist, educator, poet, author and overpopulation activist based in the USA. Her book ‘Move Upstream, A Call for Overpopulation’ was published in 2015. Her latest book ‘Change Our Stories Change our World’ was published in 2020. Karen maintains the ‘Moving Upstream’ blog and is a regular article writer. A recent article “For Your Consideration: To be Anti-Growth is to be Pro-humanity” can be read at Medium here.

Madeline Weld is president of Population Institute Canada which seeks to inform the Canadian public and policy-makers about population matters. She has impressively held this position for almost 30 years. In the spirit of this episode of busting population myths, Madeline has published many impressive articles on this subject. Favourites include: “The 'Silent Lie' in Coverage of Madagascar’s Famine,” “The Myth of Canada’s Underpopulation: Lay it to rest” and “Deconstructing the dangerous dogma of denial”.

Valorie Allen has been an activist for 35 years in the environmental, population and animal rights movements, receiving the Canadian Volunteer Award. Her first award-winning book “Growing Pains—A Planet in Distress” was published in 2010. This year, Val has published her new book “8 Billion Reasons Population Matters.” More information regarding her new book can be found here. Val’s website, Population In Sync here.

Want to find out more about World Population Day? Considering we’re reaching an 8 Billion milestone very soon in a heating world running out of resources, you might imagine that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFP) might sound a little anxious in their write up of the event. However, they sound pretty upbeat, showing more concern over population ‘alarmists’. Go figure.

The UNFP also raise concerns around the historical legacy of family planning and reproductive health care. Jane O’Sullivan’s article for The Overpopulation Project “History was rewritten to delegitimize population concerns: we need to reassert the truth” challenges these notions and is essential reading. Given that the high court in the USA has just upended the Roe vs. Wade case, ruling no constitutional right to abortion in the USA, your PGAP host believes this is just the latest in a long trend of denying funding and support for family planning and healthcare. This impacts women for the worse and contributes to the 121 million unintended pregnancies worldwide every year.

All the more need for episodes such as this one, bringing together a united female voice to the vexed population issue.

Immigration was raised in this episode and on this topic I would like to invite you to watch a small video I made in 2020 for Sustainable Population Australia. “Migrant perspective - infrastructure and population growth in Melbourne” is unique in that a first generation migrant interviewee speaks directly to a population organisation in regard to growth based issues affecting his community in Melbourne’s growth corridors. Regardless of whether you believe this is a ‘population’ issue or merely ‘a lack of planning and infrastructure’, we can all agree that our current growth based paradigm is creating infrastructure starved ghettos that impact the prospects of newly arrived migrants.