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’?! via Jamaican buses and Antarctica. Dougald talks about the privilege of taking up space, whether that’s man-spreading on the tube or being quick to jump ...
May 13, 2021•48 min
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 single object that may be displaced horizontally, vertically, diagonally - both vertically and horizontally and how its often voluntary. Ed references Thundercat...
May 06, 2021•42 min
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. And then references Alan Garner’s book Strandloper and a collection of talks and essays called The Voice That Thunders before sharing the story of how he kn...
Apr 21, 2021•49 min
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 one of the most important and influential fanzines ever written’ and his own zine ‘Learning How to Drown’ Ed talks about the etymology: Old English wæter...
Apr 14, 2021•45 min
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. As always we explore the etymology: ‘Move’ from Latin ‘movere’ (move, change, exchange, go in/out, quit) via the old French ‘moveir’.... Change of house or business Go in a specified manner...
Apr 08, 2021•44 min
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 life too seriously'.” ‘Totally Mexico! How the Nathan Barley nightmare came true’ by Andrew Harrison – https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/10/nathan-barl...
Mar 31, 2021•43 min
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 it actually do to you as an adult to have been through the kind of things that happen to a child in a fantasy novel? Ed e...
Nov 11, 2020•54 min
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 a problem, or a position in which the chances of winning or losing were evenly balanced. It’ss the exposure to or imminence of death, loss, or injury. The danger that an accused person is subjected to when...
Oct 31, 2020•51 min
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 at the End of the Lane , a children’s book for grown-ups and Gaiman’s lecture ‘What th...
Oct 22, 2020•46 min
“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 - 38.7 degrees in July 2019 and worryingly there’s something of a fairly linear relationship between risin...
Oct 15, 2020•44 min
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 that Dougald is finding helpful just now: Chris Smaje's blog (and forthcoming book) Small Farm Future – https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk ‘Who...
Oct 10, 2020•45 min
We start as is traditional with what's been getting us thinking this week... Ed talks about the film My Octopus Teacher and Nick Cohen in the Observer on ‘Sweden as the right’s fantasy land’ . This leads us onto some memorable Swedish expressions: ‘there is no cow on the ice’ (= don’t panic!); ‘Now you’ve really shat in the blue cupboard’ (another Swedish expression!). Phoebe Tickell’s Medium post, ‘Hall of Mirrors’: https://medium.com/@phoebetickell/hall-of-mirrors-4b505367243 You think you wil...
Oct 01, 2020•44 min
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 ’s visceral, transcendental and universal approach touches on the really deep recognitions we all have for...
Sep 24, 2020•47 min
We call these conversations the Great Humbling because we start from a sense that this is a time of being humbled, brought down to earth, and we want to ask what happens if we approach the moment we’re in on those terms? In this second season each week we’ll be taking a state of mind that seems to be part of the mix of being alive just now. So this is the Great Humbling: Season Two – Altered States - States of being, states of consciousness and of course the literal alteration of our nation stat...
Sep 17, 2020•46 min
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Sep 11, 2020•3 min
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 As deep as culture Cultivation of conspiracy David Fell’s Eleven More Thing s: ‘WE MUST LOOK AFTER OUR KEY WORKERS’ “There are ways of identifying the things that ...
Jun 04, 2020•47 min
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 and shape our intention? As always we begin with what caught our attention this week Ed - The House of Beautiful Business - The Great Wave and th...
May 18, 2020•58 min
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 hare leap into the deeper life.” “[Hare] nags, and pulls and bites until something vast is happening to us. We are dragged into the presence of strange angels and so pathetically grateful we can only wee...
May 07, 2020•51 min
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 – manages to be the most random and one of the most thoughtful things Dougald haas read among all the hundreds of thousands of words written in and about this cr...
Apr 30, 2020•50 min
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 We begin by revisiting a quote from Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees in 2015: ‘ It is imperative to guard against the downsides of such an interconnected world...The magni...
Apr 24, 2020•41 min
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) for Ed, as well as Martin Shaw's forthcoming book 'All Those Barbarians' - the 'grimoire' of the School of Myth, which intr...
Apr 17, 2020•41 min
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 be unquestionable, is ready to be de-pedestalled? In this second episode Dougald and Ed hold a conversational space around challenging the idea that whatever form the recovery takes it h...
Apr 09, 2020•46 min
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 obstacle to be overcome, nor the end of the world, but a necessary humbling? With Covid-19 calling into question the ways we have been living, Ed Gillespie and Dougald Hine set out to explore what it means to be humbled. This ...
Apr 04, 2020•1 hr
