2026 Symposium - Wonderstruck Podcast

Thursday June 18^th

Hello and Welcome from Hosts Elizabeth Rovere and Charles Stang and Brief Introductions

Friday June 19^th

Perception & Fracture

How Reality is Constructed and Deconstructed

04.45-07.30

Dawn Excursion: Ħaġar Qim & Mnajdra Temple
Private solstice sunrise visit and guided reflections with Dr Tore Lomsdalen exploring ancient cosmology, sacred orientation, perception and ritual space.

09.00-9.30

Opening Reflection: Reality Eludes Us, How the Question Matters
Elizabeth Rovere on the search that led here.

9.30-10.15

The Fractured Mind: Iain McGilchrist in conversation with Nigel Warburton
Fragmentation, perception, attention, and the modern crisis of meaning. Audience inquiry.

11.00-12.15

Experiences That Resist Explanation: Paul Selig and Peter Skafish, moderated by Charles Stang
A conversation exploring channeling, anomalous experience, and forms of knowing that challenge conventional models of mind and reality. Together, Paul Selig and Peter Skafish examine what happens when experience exceeds explanation, and how modern culture struggles to engage encounters that resist materialist or purely rational interpretation.

5.00-6.00

Consciousness & the Question of the Real: Donald Hoffman in zoom conversation with John Vervaeke
Consciousness, interface theory, representation, and the relationship between perception and reality.

6.30-7.30

UAPs, Myth & the Unknown: Jeffrey Kripal and Peter Skafish introduced by, and in conversation with Simon Cox
An evening aperitif and inquiry exploring anomalous phenomena, cosmology, ontology, myth, and the destabilization produced by encounters that resist conventional explanation. Followed by audience questions and group discussion.

Saturday June 20^th

Thresholds & The Unknown

Where Models Fail

Sunrise

Independent Meditation & Yoga

9.00-10.00

Provocation: When Models of Reality Break by Bayo Akomolafe, introduced by Elizabeth Rovere
Uncertainty, collapse, emergence, and the limitations of inherited frameworks of understanding.

10.00-10.45

Reality and Disruption: Maria Popova in conversation with Bayo Akomolafe, introduced by Elizabeth Rovere
A conversation on rupture, imagination, culture, and transformation.

11.15-12.00

The Limits of Explanation: Jeffrey Kripal and Dean Radin, moderated by Àlex Gómez-Marín
Anomalous experience, epistemology, mystery, and the boundaries of explanatory systems.

12.00-12.45

Living History: A Retrospective on Dean Radin’s Scientific Legacy, in conversation with Àlex Gómez-Marín

3.00-4.15

Descent, Dreams, Death & Transformation: Toko-pa Turner, Alua Arthur and Alexander Beiner, moderated by Rogan Kersh
A conversation and participatory inquiry exploring dreams, grief, mortality, altered states, symbolic death, surrender, and transformation. Together, the speakers explore how encounters with uncertainty, loss, and mystery can dissolve familiar structures of self and reality and what becomes possible in their place. Audience Reflection & Inquiry

Sunday June 21^st

Meaning, Technology & Human Futures

What Emerges Next

Sunrise

Independent Meditation & Yoga

9.00-10.00

Who Gets to Define Reality? Brian O’Kelley, Alexander Beiner, Srinija Srinivasan and Dean Radin, moderated by Rogan Kersh
How do media systems, institutions, technologies, and cultural narratives shape collective understandings of reality? Who determines what is considered credible, legitimate, or true and what happens when consensus itself begins to fracture?

10.30-11.15

Ancient Knowledge & Artificial Intelligence: April DeConick and Srinija Srinivasan, moderated by Simon Cox
How do older frameworks for understanding mind, reality, intelligence and human transformation speak to, or challenge, the emerging world of artificial intelligence?

11.30-11.15

The Worlds We Experience: Àlex Gómez-Marín & Anil Seth moderated by Nigel Warburton
People experience the world differently. Does that mean there is no real world at all? Or do we perhaps calibrate sensory signals from the world and our bodies in distinctive ways so that our experiences, though unique to us, are individual responses to an objective reality?

1.30-2.30

Synthetic Minds & Human Futures: John Vervaeke and Anil Seth, moderated by Nigel Warburton
A conversation exploring artificial intelligence, synthetic reality, cognition, narrative systems, technological acceleration, and the future of meaning-making in human civilization.

2.45-3.45

Closing Conversation: Creativity and the Fragmented Mind: John Cleese in conversation with Iain McGilchrist, introduced by Charlie Maynard
A closing reflection on creativity, imagination, humor, attention, and the human condition.