In the spring of 2020, Dougald began to record a series of conversations with Ed Gillespie. They called the resulting podcast The Great Humbling and it marks an ongoing attempt to puzzle through what it means to be brought down to earth.
In November 2021, at the start of the fourth series, we made a home for The Great Humbling within the wider patchwork of this site. Alongside the monthly episodes, we’ll be producing other Homeward Bound podcasts and bringing a wider range of voices into the mix.
- The Great Humbling S4E8: ‘We Need to Talk About George’We reach the end of Season 4 of The Great Humbling, though Ed and Dougald start the show with an invitation to a one-off live recording of a special episode with guests Rupert Read and Charlotte Du Cann for those who can join us in Norwich on 20 February. As always, we start off byContinue reading “The Great Humbling S4E8: ‘We Need to Talk About George’”
- The Great Humbling S4E7: ‘The Missing Episode’So, here’s what happened – after a long break, we sat down in early October to record the seventh episode of this series, but life got in the way and by the time we got around to editing it six weeks later, the world had changed so much that it felt like a historical document.Continue reading “The Great Humbling S4E7: ‘The Missing Episode’”
- The Great Humbling S4E6: ‘Nice to meet you’After twenty-nine episodes recorded through screens and cameras, Ed and Dougald find themselves meeting for the first time and sit down for a conversation beside the mill pond in Loddon, in the garden of the Mill of Impermanence. We hear the unlikely tale of how Dougald found Ed’s fiftieth birthday present, a copy of UriahContinue reading “The Great Humbling S4E6: ‘Nice to meet you’”
- The Great Humbling S4E5: ‘Belief’Dougald poses a big question for this episode: what do we believe in? Ed responds playfully and paradoxically with ‘self-delusion’, citing Robert Trivers work on self-deceit that includes gay pornography and erection-o-meters. And lasers. Here’s his RSA talk. Dougald talks about the formative influence of spending the first two-and-a-bit years of his life in theContinue reading “The Great Humbling S4E5: ‘Belief’”
- The Great Humbling S4E4: ‘Are we going to talk about Ukraine?’We started this podcast in the early weeks of the pandemic, talking about the stories circling around it. A crisis had come out of the corner of almost everyone’s field of vision and became, within weeks, the only thing in the news. Two years on, something similar has happened, so we arrived at this episode wondering whether or not to talk about Ukraine.
- The Great Humbling S4E3: “Remapping Lava”At the start of 2022, we revisit the earliest episodes of The Great Humbling in which we tried to map the stories taking shape around the pandemic. How does it all look now, almost two years on? And is the ground on the move again?
- The Great Humbling S4E2: “The Commonplace”In which we talk about the contested history of ‘the commons’, the old rhetorical idea of ‘the common-place’, the economics of Swedish hotel breakfast buffets and the enduring brilliance of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s Cornetto trilogy.
- The Great Humbling S4E1: ‘Confessions’We’re back for a fourth series of conversations between Dougald Hine and Ed Gillespie, now as part of the wider patchwork of Homeward Bound. Our theme for this first episode is confessions, but we start by looking back over the summer that’s gone.
- The Great Humbling S3E8: ‘Now…breathe!’We begin with some listener feedback from last week’s ‘Get on your knees!’ about prayer… Before Dougald introduces our final instruction of the workout… Now Breathe! We talk about the beautiful, simple pleasures of a degree of lockdown emergence, how Build Back Better went from a call for a radical progressive alliance to seize theContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E8: ‘Now…breathe!’”
- The Great Humbling S3E7: ‘Get on your knees!’Ed talks about Martin Shaw’s new book ‘Smokehole – looking to the wild in the time of the spyglass’ and the line ‘The mess out there is because of a mess in here’ Dougald discusses the difference between privilege, entitlement and the ‘work that is mine to do’ and references Alastair McIntosh’s four questions: “DoesContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E7: ‘Get on your knees!’”
- The Great Humbling S3E6: ‘Small yourself up!’Dougald references a long essay by David Cayley, ‘Gaia and the path of the Earth’ and Bruno Latour’s book, Facing Gaia, contradictions ‘must be endured and sustained, not resolved or overcome’ and Vanessa Andreotti on ‘layering’ Ed talks about his first paddle upstream from the Mill and introduces this week’s instruction: ‘Small yourself up’?! viaContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E6: ‘Small yourself up!’”
- The Great Humbling S3E5: ‘See Double!’Dougald realises how his work these days has come to orbit around the future and discovers he’s accidentally became a futurist Ed shares his journey to accidental, reluctant, futurism Then Dougald introduces this week’s instruction is ‘See Double!’ Ed talks about Double Vision or Diplopia – the simultaneous perception of two images of a singleContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E5: ‘See Double!’”
- The Great Humbling S3E4: ‘Do shrooms!’Dougald shares Lucille Clifton’s poem ‘Blessing the boats’ And this week’s instruction is – ‘Do Shrooms!’ Ed introduces one of the inspirations for the episode Merlin Sheldrake’s book, ‘Entangled Life – How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures’ Dougald talks about his fly agaric birthday cake. For his fifth birthday. AndContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E4: ‘Do shrooms!’”
- The Great Humbling S3E3: ‘Be like water!’Dougald talks about Campfire Convention https://campfireconvention.uk/ Ed introduces this week’s ‘New Move’ instruction: Be Like Water Dougald tells a story about meeting Cindy Crabb on a North Sea ferry and receiving her zine, later compiled as the Encyclopedia of Doris, a review at Zine Nation says ‘it’s not an overstatement to say that it’s oneContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E3: ‘Be like water!’”
- The Great Humbling S3E2: ‘Move your ass!’Let’s get ready to humble! This episode’s instruction is ‘Move Your Ass!’ and Dougald finds himself saying words that have literally never come out of his mouth Dougald talks about finding a place to call HOME. Ed talks about moving to a three hundred year old wooden Norfolk water Mill and horse skull floors. AsContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E2: ‘Move your ass!’”
- The Great Humbling S3E1: ‘Keep it foolish!’Welcome to series three of the Great Humbling – ‘New Moves’. And given that we’re returning on the 1st of April, which is obviously no accident, your first move is… Keep It Foolish! “A deliberately non-sensical parting farewell, popularised in the TV programme ‘Nathan Barley’. It approximately means ‘see you later’ and ‘don’t take lifeContinue reading “The Great Humbling S3E1: ‘Keep it foolish!’”
- The Great Humbling S2E8: ‘State of Limbo’We start with a reference to Kenny Rogers to ‘see what condition our condition is in? Then in the context of the US election this clip: https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1158569576168402945?s=21 from Professor Eddie Glaude of African American studies at Princeton ‘White Americans confronting the danger of their innocence’ Dougald talks about Alan Garner’s Boneland and what would itContinue reading “The Great Humbling S2E8: ‘State of Limbo’”
- The Great Humbling S2E7: ‘State of Jeopardy’In the week before the US election we finally do an episode where we talk about American politics and how it fits into this larger conversation about what it means if we’re living in a time of great humbling. ‘Jeopardy’ was originally used in the 14th century in chess and other games to denote aContinue reading “The Great Humbling S2E7: ‘State of Jeopardy’”
- The Great Humbling S2E6: ‘State of Play’Do grown-ups play? What’s been playing on our minds this week? Ed talks about the House of Beautiful Business – ‘The Great Wave’, hislove letter to the ocean (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5MvdgAZThw&feature=youtu.be) and ‘Wild Solo’…and their playful silent hour farewell…the embodiment of playfulness…mime, secret notes, hugs, smiling with your eyes… Dougald talks about Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean atContinue reading “The Great Humbling S2E6: ‘State of Play’”
- The Great Humbling S2E5: ‘State of Anger’“If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention” Dougald pays to get emails from a very angry man – Mic Wright’s Substack, Conquest of the Useless (which he picked up via Chris T-T’s The Border Crossing newsletter) Ed shares his ‘Twitter Hate-storm’ story! (https://mashable.com/article/covert-photos-strangers-going-viral-twitter/?europe=true) From the hottest day ever recorded in the UK – 38.7Continue reading “The Great Humbling S2E5: ‘State of Anger’”
- The Great Humbling S2E4: ‘State of Tension’Here we are in a state of tension… What have we been reading? ‘The Precipice – Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-precipice-9781526600219/ Revisiting The Road by Cormac McCarthy Paul Behren’s brilliant The Best of Times / the Worst of Times Balance these with voices that straddle different scales. Three thatContinue reading “The Great Humbling S2E4: ‘State of Tension’”
- The Great Humbling S2E3: ‘State of Panic’The third episode in our Altered States series is State of Panic and includes Dougald trying to explain the Swedish idiom about what you shouldn’t do in the blue cupboard and Ed reading a couple of paeans to the great god Pan – we should have got The Waterboys in there somewhere. The two of us try to remember the moment when we first felt real panic about climate change, and wonder about what lies beyond both hope and panic.
- The Great Humbling S2E2 ‘State of Grace’We start with Adam Ramsay, ‘Queer Eye’, Jordan Peterson and the Battle for Depressed Men – https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/queer-eye-jordan-peterson-and-the-battle-for-depressed-men/ Do we really have to choose between Carl Jung and archetypal psychology on the one side and Antonio Gramsci and the analysis of hegemony on the other side? We reflect on whether the West Country School of Myth’sContinue reading “The Great Humbling S2E2 ‘State of Grace’”
- The Great Humbling S2E1: ‘State of Alert’In this second series, we set out to explore the ‘Altered States’ that we’re seeing, six months into the pandemic: states of being, states of consciousness, and the literal alteration of our nation states. In Episode 1 we start with ‘State of Alert’.
- The Great Humbling S1E8: ‘How’s your humbling?’Why we’re recording this final episode of Series One at night, as our children sleep Reviewing the journey we’ve been on together since late March… Mapping Lava…where are we now on the emerging sensemaking and stories? Can we afford an economic recovery? Towards a language of longing… Bestiary of metaphors World turned upside down AsContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E8: ‘How’s your humbling?’”
- The Great Humbling S1E7: ‘The cultivation of conspiracy?’Conspiracy literally means ‘to breathe together’. What is causing us to inhale such a complex mix of vaporous ideas right now? Are these ‘voodoo histories’ being written wilfully or are they a perhaps understandable response to fear and uncertainty? And how do these ‘double binds’ of inextricable impossibilities influence the way we receive information andContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E7: ‘The cultivation of conspiracy?’”
- The Great Humbling S1E6: ‘As deep as culture’We start with Martin Shaw’s hare-piece (hair piece?) – ‘A Hare’s Leap or a Rabbit’s Hop?’, a typically stirring offering from Dr Shaw that bristles with energy and soul, and backbone… “Culture is being forced to leap at this moment, but we run grievous risk of a rabbit hop back to safety not a hareContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E6: ‘As deep as culture’”
- The Great Humbling S1E5: ‘A world turned upside down’Introducing ‘A World Turned Upside Down’, an old english ballad ‘a brief description of the ridiculous fashions of these distracted times’…coined in protest at Parliament’s attempts to make Christmas a solemn occasion (not a traditionally english raucous one) David Fell – The Economics of Enough – and his piece: Eleven Things So Far – managesContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E5: ‘A world turned upside down’”
- The Great Humbling S1E4: ‘A bestiary of metaphors’In this episode Dougald and Ed explore the ‘bestiary’ of metaphors stalking this time, the creatures of our imaginations, we are walking with beasts – black elephants, green swans, impossible hamsters – and nightingales. ‘Will there be singing in the dark times. Yes, there will be singing about the dark times’ Bertolt Brecht 1939 WeContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E4: ‘A bestiary of metaphors’”
- The Great Humbling S1E3: ‘Framing a language of longing’In this episode we explore the framing of a potential ‘language of longing’, beginning with the usual reviews of our recent relevant reading: ‘Eco-Anxiety’ by Anouschka Grose (which explores pertinent themes: anxiety, trauma, grief, immortality systems and death denial – as well as their counter-points joy, wonder, awe, imagination, wild generosity and radical friendliness) forContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E3: ‘Framing a language of longing’”
- The Great Humbling S1E2: ‘Can we afford an economic recovery?’You can hear the rising chatter: the bubbling of ‘back to normal’, the stimulus packages, the business resurrection plans, the recovery that everyone is longing for, and at the heart of it the sense that economic growth is the answer. But is it? Perhaps the biggest sacred cow, so deeply embedded culturally as to beContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E2: ‘Can we afford an economic recovery?’”
- The Great Humbling S1E1: ‘Mapping Lava’How will they look in hindsight, these times we’re living through? Is this a midlife crisis on the road to the Star Trek future, or the point at which that story of the future unravelled and we came to see how much it had left out? What if our current crises are neither an obstacleContinue reading “The Great Humbling S1E1: ‘Mapping Lava’”