As the fifth season of The Great Humbling came to an end, we recognised that what we’ve been doing is letting you listen in on a conversation that we would want to have anyway – and this inspired us to expand the podcast, to bring you overheard

The Great Humbling S5E8: 'State of the Humbling'

Feb 29th, 2024 55m 42s

The end of this fifth series of The Great Humbling finds us looking back over the loose ends from earlier episodes, exploring the wider field of “Humility Studies” and asking who exactly we think we’re talking to, anyway?We start with Ed report

The Great Humbling S5E7: 'Founders Confessions'

Feb 16th, 2024 58m 18s

In our latest episode, Ed and Dougald compare notes on the experience of being founders – or co-founders – of organisations. What did we learn along the way? And what do humble forms of leadership look like?We were recording on Shrove Tuesday,

The Great Humbling S5E6: 'The Low Agreements'

Feb 2nd, 2024 53m 28s

This is the episode where we finally left Skype, which we’ve for some reason been using to record these conversations for four and a half series. Switching off the lights as we go, Ed wonders about other examples of old systems and technologies

The Great Humbling S5E5: 'Make Populism Good Again?'

Jan 19th, 2024 54m 26s

Here's a rundown of references from this episode... Leah Rampy, Earth & Soul: Reconnecting Amid Climate Chaos Bill Drummond, 45 David Mitchell, Unruly David Graeber & David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything Jay LeSoleil, 'Green' Elites vs Gre

The Great Humbling S5E4: 'The Forever Project'

Dec 15th, 2023 42m 10s

Our final episode of 2023 finds Dougald already in his Christmas jumper, as the tiredness of a busy year catches up with the pair of us. Ed opens a window on Sophie Howarth’s Lighting the Dark: An Advent Calendar. We share the Benjamin Zephani

The Great Humbling S5E3: 'We Used to Have Fun'

Nov 30th, 2023 52m 52s

We take a different route into our conversation this time around, in what turns out to be the first in a two-parter woven around John Higgs’s book, The KLF: Chaos, Magic & the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, which Ed has been reading. It’s th

The Great Humbling S5E2: 'Words in Wartime'

Nov 17th, 2023 59m 42s

We recorded this episode on Dougald’s birthday – and Ed starts with the image of him wearing Anna’s family’s Coyote coat, triggering unsettling flashbacks to the QAnon shaman, who is apparently now running for Congress. Welcome to the dark weir

The Great Humbling S5E1: 'The Ruined Church'

Nov 1st, 2023 54m 52s

Welcome back to Season 5 of The Great Humbling! Here are some show notes... The Regrowing a Living Culture series at a school called HOME starts on 7 & 8 November. Ed has been reading Dougie Strang’s book, The Bone Cave. Dougald mentions the cl

The Great Humbling: Live at Norwich Arts Centre

Sep 28th, 2023 1h 15m

In February this year, we took The Great Humbling into a new format, a live conversation on stage at Norwich Arts Centre as part of the UK tour that Dougald made to launch his book, At Work in the Ruins. It's taken us rather a long time to get

The Great Humbling S4E8: 'We Need to Talk About George'

Feb 1st, 2023 1h 2m

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 Norwic

The Great Humbling S4E7: 'The Missing Episode'

Nov 25th, 2022 50m 51s

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 t

The Great Humbling S4E6: 'Nice to meet you'

Jul 19th, 2022 54m 59s

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 he

The Great Humbling S4E5: 'Belief'

May 24th, 2022 49m 12s

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

The Great Humbling S4E4: 'Are we going to talk about Ukraine?'

Mar 21st, 2022 51m 29s

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 y

The Great Humbling S4E3: "Remapping Lava"

Jan 31st, 2022 1h 1m

We’ve been listening back to the first episode we made, almost two years ago, in the early weeks of the time of Covid. Maybe it’s the influence of revisiting those early episodes, or maybe it has to do with Dougald turning up to our Janu

Remapping Lava

Jan 31st, 2022 1h 1m

The Great Humbling S4E2: "The Commonplace"

Dec 22nd, 2021 35m 17s

This episode starts with a little reflection on our new more-or-less monthly schedule, and in the course of this episode, we talk about a few other podcasts: Ingrid Rieser's Forest of Thought Per Johansson & Eric Schüldt's Swedish-langua

The Great Humbling S4E1: 'Confessions'

Nov 3rd, 2021 37m 9s

The Great Humbling is 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

The Great Humbling S3E8: 'Now...breathe!'

May 27th, 2021 53m 43s

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 lockdo

'Now...breathe!'

May 27th, 2021 53m 44s

'Get on your knees!'

May 21st, 2021 46m 46s

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

The Great Humbling S3E7: 'Get on your knees!'

May 21st, 2021 46m 46s

The Great Humbling S3E6: 'Small yourself up!'

May 13th, 2021 47m 47s

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 tal