• 59 minutes 35 seconds
    So you want to make a time capsule (with Rosy Scholes and Ellen Knight)

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    What will farming look like in 100 years time? That's the question asked by a group of University of Reading PhD students, managed by Rosy Scholes and Ellen Knight, as part of the University of Reading's centenary celebrations.

    In this pod, Joe and Ollie catch up with Rosy and Ellen about their research and their project, which culminated in the burial of a time capsule in our garden, filled with research, creative responses, and visions of what the future of farming might be.

    The time capsule project was funded by the University of Reading Centenary Project Grant Scheme and completed with the assistance of Phillippa Heath, Dr Ollie Douglas, Dannielle Keegel, Katie Somerville-Hall, Talor Whitham, Tatiana Dickins, Wiktoria Szkolnicka, Prof Deepa Senapathi, Lucy Markwell and Claire Biggs.

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    10 September 2026, 12:00 pm
  • 42 minutes 56 seconds
    21st-century MERL (with Kate Arnold-Forster)

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    How do you lead a rural history museum in 2026? What does that look like in practice? And how does our contemporary work vary to the vision of our founders back in 1951?

    In this second of two conversations with Kate Arnold-Forster, Director of The Museum of English Rural Life and the University of Reading's Museums and Collections, Ollie and Joe chat with Kate about our museum's ongoing evolution, the power of eBay for contemporary collecting, and what the future holds for university museums.

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    27 August 2026, 3:00 pm
  • 39 minutes 33 seconds
    How to move a museum down a hill (with Kate Arnold-Forster)

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    So far we've spoken a lot about The Museum of English Rural Life's earliest years. Yet so much of what we are today results from a radical rethinking of what The MERL can be, which has happened under the brilliant stewardship of Kate Arnold-Forster, Director of The Museum of English Rural Life and the University of Reading's Museums and Collections.

    In this episode, we speak with Kate about her journey into museums, the significance of university museums, and her pivotal role in turning The MERL into the museum you know today.

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    13 August 2026, 2:00 pm
  • 1 hour 47 seconds
    Bad Bunny, Star Wars, and Stardew Valley (Joe and Ollie special)

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    What have we been up to lately? What's coming up? And what's the rural significance of Bad Bunny's performance at the Superbowl?

    In this episode, Joe and Ollie have a general chat about a bunch of different topics, which each connect - in some surprising ways - to the collections we hold here at The Museum of English Rural Life.

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    30 July 2026, 3:00 pm
  • 1 hour 1 minute
    What can we learn from the T-rex? (with Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel)

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    We're back with our second episode with the University of Reading's Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel! We continue talking about their Nature-centric Catalyst project, how we can rebuild our relationships with the natural world, and what's coming up next for our collaboration with Tom and Marzia at the museum.

    Relevant links:

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    16 July 2026, 11:00 am
  • 55 minutes 42 seconds
    Ego vs eco (with Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel)

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    How does humanity fit into nature? How long have we viewed ourselves as being apart from it? And what are the problems that creates?

    This time, we chat with Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel from the University of Reading to learn about their Nature-centric Catalyst project. We discuss the rights of nature, the advocacy landscape today, and how we can better centre the natural world in our thoughts and deeds.

    Also, we end with a 5-minute meditation, beautifully performed by Marzia.

    Relevant links:

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    2 July 2026, 3:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 36 seconds
    Radical Rural Revisited (Joe and Ollie special)

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    Okay. Take 2.

    Last month we drew to a close two major installations at The MERL: our gallery trail Radical Rural, and our exhibition Voices of the Countryside.

    In this episode, Joe and Ollie reflect on these two projects. We explore what we learned from them, what they meant to us, and how we want to build on this work for the future.

    We also talk about the World Cup, explain what the heck went wrong last time, and go on a few other tangents that we don't regret at all. Enjoy.

    Relevant links:

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    18 June 2026, 5:00 am
  • 42 minutes 28 seconds
    The art of accessible spaces (with Anahita Harding)

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    How do museums engage with accessibility, both as spaces that welcome visitors and as collections of human stories?

    On this episode, we're joined by the brilliant disability activist and performance artist Anahita Harding. 

    We discuss Anahita's work in agricultural museums (both the Food Museum and The MERL), the histories of disability in our collection, and how we can improve access and representation for disabled people in the future.

    Relevant links:

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    28 May 2026, 6:00 am
  • 50 minutes 6 seconds
    50 Million Pheasants Later (with Guy Shrubsole)

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    Turns out delays come like London buses. First Joe got the flu. Then we accidentally re-shared the first episode with Guy rather than the new one. If you listened before we caught it, we hope you enjoyed that episode even more the second time.

    Anyways, we're back! We return in full strength, with the right episode to boot, to pick up once more with the brilliant environmentalist, author, and campaigner Guy Shrubsole.

    Where last time we charted a potted history of land ownership and access in England, from the Normans to the present day, this time we're honing in on one specific case study: hunting and more specifically grouse shooting. What does hunting teach us about how land gets used and shared? How has hunting changed? And what are the disastrous ecological impacts of unleashing 50 million pheasants each year into the English countryside?

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    18 May 2026, 9:00 am
  • 1 hour 3 seconds
    Who owns England? (with Guy Shrubsole)

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    It's a simple three-word question. Yet the answer is extremely complicated, expensive, and concealed behind paywalls that run into hundreds of millions of pounds.

    How did we get here? And how do we get out of it?

    In this episode, Joe and Ollie are joined by the remarkable author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole (co-founder of Right to Roam) to explore the question of who really owns England. We chart the course of land management in England from the Norman conquest, through to the Tudors, and right up to the present day, with policy changes coming out as recently as 2026.

    Learn more about Right to Roam: https://www.righttoroam.org.uk/

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    16 April 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 28 seconds
    Quick schedule update

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    Hi folks! We're closed tomorrow for Easter (which is when we'd usually release our next episode). Ollie and Joe are also in and out of the office at the moment, so we're going to use this as a chance for a brief hiatus and we'll then be back to regular programming in 2 weeks' time. See you very soon!

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    Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

    Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
    Producer: Joe Vaughan

    1 April 2026, 1:00 pm
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