How is sport a spiritual practice? What is the value of coaching? Why are collective undertakings as valuable as individual goals?

Mark Vernon talks with Ed Haddon, who Is one of the directors of the Realisation Festival and knows St Giles House, playing a longstanding part in its re-emergence. He has represented England in sport and learnt much from the pursuit of excellence. He also knows the ways in which the choices we make in life can be deeply affected by personal difficulties and pain. He talks with Mark about what realisation can mean, how the festival is held by the directors, and what it means to discover your distinctiveness.

Ed Haddon is the founder of Haddon Coaching. For more see - https://www.haddoncoaching.com. His book is The Modern Maverick - https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/modern-maverick-9781399407090.

What do we really learn from neuroscience? How can scientific assumptions shape the world we perceive? Why might notions such as soul and mind matter all the more in times of mechanistic, computational thinking?

Mark Vernon talks with philosopher and neuroscientist Mazviita Chirimuuta.

Mazviita is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and author of the prize-winning book, The Brain Abstracted. She is also an advisor to the Realisation Festival

Details of her books can be found at MIT Press - https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/m-chirimuuta-17741/

Many of today’s troubles could be described as ones of connection. But is that about a lack of connection, a flood of connection, or perhaps the quality of connections?

Mark Vernon talks with Kenneth Cross about relationally and, in particular, the inspiration that might be drawn from fungi. Mycelium exist in a substerranean world, blurring the distinctions between organisms, sharing in ways that are strange even disturbing. So what light does that cast on human sympathies and selfhood?

The conversation ranges over the ideas of Iain McGilchrist and Merlin Sheldrake, over the challenges of meeting in groups and our basic views of reality.

Kenneth is a vicar and a writer.