Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. It's so important to me that this

podcast makes you feel a little less alone in dark times. But I also love using this space

to really expand our knowledge and I'm very, very much including myself in that. So today

I'm meeting DJ, turned farmer and decato. What I had before, that was feeling when you're

standing in the wings with your mates, that is magic. But it's an adrenaline-based happiness.

Well, I've had the fortune to experience through my kind of mental shift is the different

kind of happiness doing physical labour in the context of a project that makes sense in

your head. It is just magic, on the kind of depth that is hard to convey.

You might know Andy as half of Groove Armada, but 15 years ago he read an article that

completely changed the course of his life. I'll let him tell you more about that in a moment,

but the upshot is that he's now doing genuinely game-changing work to revolutionise our farming

system and, in turn, tackle climate change and make our physical bodies healthier too.

It's funny how often we separate food issues, physical health issues, environmental issues

from mental health, but of course they're all hugely linked. If our planet is thriving,

then we're thriving. If the planet is thriving, food is growing beautifully and naturally,

which we, which helps us to thrive, and if our physical bodies are thriving, of course

our minds are too. It's all part of a bigger conversation.

Right, laptop, I'm ready to finish this thesis. What thesis? The one I've spent two years

working on. Don't have it. What's the last version you saved?

I've got final version, final final version, and no, I'm actually serious now. This is

the last version I will never save another version I promise, version two.

Surely that one? No. Why? It's corrupted.

...