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My Podcasts Projects

The Great Humbling

A slow-paced, conversational podcast in which Ed Gillespie and I ask what it means to be humbled – and whether this might be a good frame for making sense of the times we’re living in.

What does it mean to be humbled? Perhaps it’s to lose some pride, to feel less important. Even a little defeated. From the Latin humus, soil: to be brought down to earth, to bite the dust, to be laid low. In that sense maybe a humbling can never actually be welcomed in as ‘great’? We would never wish for this encounter with mortality on a planetary scale. But here we are.  

In early 2020, I’d begun a conversation with Ed Gillespie, futurist and founder of the environmental communications agency Futerra. The Covid-19 pandemic reached Europe that March and it was against that background that we decided to put this conversation we were having into a podcast.

Our first series of eight episodes was published between April and June. You can find it in all the usual podcast places, or listen in the player on this page. (Use the Menu link at the bottom right of the player to select episodes.)

Check out the show notes for each episode on Libsyn for references and links to the people, projects, books and articles we talk about.

We’re planning to record a second series in the autumn of 2020.