\"A song is sort of like a flower coming out of a compost heap.\" — Charlie McGee, Formidable Vegetable
Charlie McGee once turned down $120,000 a year cutting carrots for a fossil fuel company. His finger wouldn't send the email. Instead, he took $2,000 and spent a year volunteering at festivals around the country — ending up at Woodford, where the seed of Formidable Vegetable was planted in a permaculture talk at the Greenhouse.
More than 20 years later, he's built a straw house in Denmark, WA with 40 friends. For a while, he could buy a croissant from the local bakery made from the same wheat crop as his walls. He's played Glastonbury five times, quit flying for seven years, and written a viral song from a hotel room in Slovakia that got shared by Reggie Watts and contributed — he'll take it — to a wobble in a certain streaming giant's share price..
Harley Breen sits down with Charlie for a conversation that covers an almost unreasonable amount of ground. They talk about what permaculture actually is once you get past the composting dunny of Charlie's childhood and into the systems thinking, the indigenous knowledge frameworks, and the radical idea that self-sufficiency is a myth — community is the point. About the impossible balance of being a touring musician who believes in living locally. About a major streaming platform investing artist royalties in AI killer drone technology, and the song Charlie wrote about it in a hotel room in Slovakia. About what it means to be a Luddite in 2025 as an act of resistance. And about active hope — the Joanna Macy framework that keeps Charlie going on the days when nihilism starts winning.
Also: garden snails purged with flour, eaten like salami bites, and treated as pets first. You've been warned.
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Key topics: Formidable Vegetable, Charlie McGee, permaculture, regenerative living, music activism, Woodford Folk Festival, sustainable building, Glastonbury, AI music, active hope
To come to the Woodford Folk Festival this year visit: https://woodfordfolkfestival.com/
FOR MORE:
Harley Breen: https://www.harleybreen.com.au
Formidable Vegetable:
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/formidableveg/
https://www.instagram.com/not_just_charlie
Web: https://formidablevegetable.com.au/
https://formidablevegetable.bandcamp.com/
Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects: https://workthatreconnects.org
CREDITS: Host: Harley Breen | Guest: Charlie McGee of Formidable Vegetable | Executive Producer: Benny Wallington, Bree Hickson-Jamieson | Producers: Cameron Scurrah, Georgia Shaw, Amelie Barham, Benjamin 'Tofty' Toft | Video Editing: Nick Haddow | Music by: The East Pointers | Recorded on Jinibara Country Recorded December 2025
#RadioWoodfordia #FormidableVegetable #CharlieMcGee #HarleyBreen #WoodfordFolkFestival #Woodfordia #Permaculture #Sustainability #MusicActivism #AIMusic #RegenerativeLiving #ActiveHope #Podcast #LiveMusic
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