The Realisation Festival Podcast

This is an episode of Do Radio Series, Where To Next?, hosted by Dan Kieran.

Dan came to Realisation 2025 and, for this episode, spoke with Charles Foster, one of our speakers.

Dan writes: “I’m thrilled to say that this year I attended again and went to another workshop with Benedict and this time I asked him to wear a microphone so you could listen in. He tells us about his business Mighty Fine Oaks, training to be a Samurai and gives the most astonishing explanation I have ever heard for why you sometimes find two oak trees seemingly growing from the same place. This has haunted me since hearing about it.

I also had the astonishingly good fortune to meet Nikki Trott who I had not come across before the festival. I now feel like I was ‘supposed’ to meet her in the way that will be familiar to regular listeners to the show. Mark Vernon introduced us and we sat down for a conversation that begins with me explaining my journey to make sense of what it means to live before I die. The chemistry that then appears between us as Nikki recounts her own journey was a joy to behold in real time. Nikki had her own introduction into what in the series we have been describing as Carl Jung’s Second Adulthood in her late twenties and has been exploring and luxuriating in it ever since.”

Find Dan's Substack, The Weirdo’s Journey, for more.

This is an episode of Do Radio Series, Where To Next?, hosted by Dan Kieran.

Dan came to Realisation 2025 and, for this episode, spoke with Indra Adnan, festival advisor and speaker.

Dan writes: “My experiences at the Realisation Festival have been life changing and profound. The RF is the real deal and I urge you to look it up if you relate to any of the episodes in the series. But even by the standards of the wonderful conversations I have had so far this one was exceptional. I think it’s because what I intended to be an interview with Indra about her life and work became an exploration of what I’m doing with these episodes and how they fit in with the changes many of us wish to see in the world as a result of the meta-crisis we all face. 

Our chat then evolved into a kind of therapy session for me that ended with me having a genuinely life changing realisation about the journey I am on, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

Find Dan's Substack, The Weirdo’s Journey, for more.

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Sep. 21, 2026 @ 5PM
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My experiences at the RF have been life changing and profound. The RF is the real deal and I urge you to look it up if you relate to any of the episodes in the series. But even by the standards of the wonderful conversations I have had so far this one was exceptional. I think it’s because what I intended to be an interview with Indra about her life and work became an exploration of what I’m doing with these episodes and how they fit in with the changes many of us wish to see in the world as a result of the meta-crisis we all face. 

Our chat then evolved into a kind of therapy session for me that ended with me having a genuinely life changing realisation about the journey I am on, if you’ll excuse the pun.

This is an episode of Do Radio Series, Where To Next?, hosted by Dan Kieran.

Dan came to Realisation 2025 and, for this episode, spoke with Sarah Corbett, one of our speakers.

Dan writes: “This is such a beautiful interview. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so relaxed speaking to anyone and Sarah said afterwards it was unlike any interview she has ever done before. 

Sarah’s work is changing the world. But it doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people who believe in her support her through her patreon. 

Find out more about her work and support Sarah at: 

www.craftivist-collective.com

and join me by becoming one of her monthly patrons at

www.gentleprotest.com”.

Find Dan's Substack, The Weirdo’s Journey, for more.

This is an episode of Do Radio Series, Where To Next?, hosted by Dan Kieran.

Dan came to Realisation 2025 and, for this episode, spoke with Charles Foster, one of our speakers.

Dan writes: “Charles is a very modest man and seems genuinely baffled as to why anyone would find his work illuminating, but I have found it to be astonishingly so. And it’s also utterly re-enchanting at the same time. As though the world he describes was always on the tip of your tongue and he summons it out of you while you are in his company.

I hope you enjoy the discussion where, as well as these two books I just mentioned, we also talk about his latest excellent work  The Edges of The World.”

Find Dan's Substack, The Weirdo’s Journey, for more.

This is the fourth episode of Do Radio Series, Where To Next?, hosted by Dan Kieran.

Dan came to Realisation 2025 and, for this episode, spoke with Roc Sandford and Sarah Wilson, two of our speakers.

Dan writes: "This is an incredible event that takes place over three days at St Giles House, the home of the Earl of Shaftesbury. I was thrilled first to meet Roc, who lives off-grid on the island of Gometra off the coast of Mull, and then Sarah Wilson, the former editor of Cosmoplitan and presenter of Masterchef in Australia who writes the extraordinarily successful Substack, This is Precious."

Find Dan's Substack, Following The Stag, for more.

Handicrafts, including knitting, sewing, cross-stitching, as a form of activism?

Speaking with Mark Vernon, Sarah explains how this quiet, multi-sensory, and mindful approach to pressing matters helps gather thoughts and process feelings. 

She will be speaking and offering a workshop at the Realisation Festival 2026.

Arising from her own story and activist work, Sarah also discusses the crucial important of a space for inner reflection and compassionate conversation. Craftivism offers a form that is useful tool to protest without fuelling polarisation or burnout. 

What campaigns and cases has it impacted? How might it extend activism? Might this be an activism for the non-activist, as well?  

For more on craftivism see https://www.craftivist-collective.com/

For more on the Realisation Festival 2026 see https://realisationfestival.com/

There is another world that is also here and it can empower people in times of trouble. Kim Willis tells Mark Vernon that she stepped outside, bringing her expertise in systems thinking and the value of stories, to discover resources in England, Wales and Scotland that modern culture often overlooks. 

She describes her discoveries and their impact in her new book, "No Fair Maidens", and will bring that energy to the Realisation Festival 2026. What difference can an imaginative encounter with enchantment bring? How do stories that are close to us meet us and empower us? Why do they much matter in a time when people are searching for positive ways of living? There are living myths waiting for our return to them!

For more on Kim’s book and work see - https://www.kim-willis.com/

For more on the Realisation Festival, including tickets, see - https://realisationfestival.com/

Can businesses today become a source of healing and regeneration? What shifts are required in our appreciation of money and wealth to make commercial organisations into living systems in the service of life? What inner work is required, both by leaders and society as a whole, to make this transition? 

Speaker, transformation coach and thought leader, Nikki Trott, talking with Mark Vernon, explores some of the themes she will bring to Realisation 2026.

Her book is Sacred Business. Find out more here - https://www.nikkitrott.com/

For more on the Realisation Festival - https://realisationfestival.com/

Why does politics feel increasingly frantic, economics increasingly deluded, culture increasingly empty - even when led by seemingly good people? 

Charles Foster explores how, at root, modern ways of life uncouple us from the heart of what makes us human: a love of horizons and edges. With that perspective lost, power is mostly about control, not allure, and society organises around safety rather than spirit. 

What does this mean for notions like nation states and sciences of prediction? Drawing particularly on the work of Iain McGilchrist, Charles asks again about the meaning of life, individual and collective, by stepping towards uncertainty.

Charles is speaking with Mark Vernon and will be at the Realisation Festival, at St Giles House, Dorset, June 25-28, 2026.

For more about Realisation 2026 - https://realisationfestival.com/

For more about Charles Foster - https://charlesfoster.co.uk/

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 themes and more on the opening of the first day of the Realisation Festival, 2026. She will invite us to consider possibilities beyond the hero's journey and also how to draw on images, community and the land.

Sharon was talking with Mark Vernon.

For more on Sharon's work, not least her new book, Ripening, see https://sharonblackie.net/

For more on the Realisation Festival, see https://realisationfestival.com/