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 over the summer that's gone. Ed offers us Carol Campayne's seasonal map of responsible leadership with questions that follow the turning of the year:

• Spring: What's emerging? What are the new green shoots?
• Summer: What's blooming? What's in floral technicolor?
• Autumn: What do I need to give up, relinquish, let fall away?
• Winter: What can I see clearly now the leaves have dropped?

Dougald talks about the experience of voicing the audiobook of Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (who regular listeners may know as Vanessa Andreotti).

Ed introduces Nova Reid's book, The Good Ally, and the uncomfortable memories of his own childhood that it brought back.

Confessions often involve the revelation of personal facts that we would rather keep hidden.

Ed recalls his experiences taking the Earthly Sins Confessional Booth to Glastonbury.

Dougald talks about unexpectedly finding himself in a European airport this summer and the pervasive advertising for a future of fossil-free flying and ubiquitous 5G drone-facilitated 'easy'-ness.

Ed's been listening to Tyson Yunkaporta yarning with Adah Parris about 'Cyborg Shamanism'.

And we close with Raimon Panikkar's definition of a person as 'a knot within a net of relationships'.