The Realisation Festival Podcast
Welcome to the podcast of the Realisation Festival, which takes place every year at St Giles House, Wimborne, Dorset (http://realisationfestival.com).
The podcast is hosted by Mark Vernon, in conversation with individuals who have attended the festival. The aim is to develop a sense of the various ways in which realising is done, as people offer reflections on ideas, experiences, books and activities.
The Realisation Festival Podcast
Latest Episodes
The Power of Story. Sharon Blackie on her themes for Realisation 2026
How can myths and fairytales help us, personally and collectively? What stories, often almost lost, can aid us with contemporary crises? Why does the imagination so very much matter?Sharon Blackie will lead us in the exploration of these...
A Whole Other Story. A conversation on the shape of Realisation 2026.
The Realisation Festival is a soulful response to the crises of our times. So, with two months to go before this year’s gathering, Nick Shaftesbury, Pippa Evans and Ed Haddon sat down with Mark Vernon to explore the shape of the programme this ...
Reviving the Education Commons and Speaking Truth to Power. A conversation with Guy Standing
Guy Standing is an economist whose new book Human Capital: The Tragedy of the Education Commons has much to say about a key theme of the festival: bildung. His thoughts on the corruption of education by policies that have l...
The alchemy of music and improvisation. A conversation with Pippa Evans and Christopher Ash
The Realisation Festival is much to do with perspective and gaining fresh takes on current issues. That widening of horizons is greatly aided by combining ideas with music, insights with improvisation. Laughing with others is liberating, too.&n...
The intelligence of molecules. A conversation with Pauline Rudd
A new paradigm is beginning to emerge in biology, though for some biologists, the new is, in fact, the old. The reductive treatment of living organisms, as if the gene were all, is giving way to the realisation that intelligence, even agency, o...