How do we reclaim the centre-ground and create more peaceful co-existence?

Christine Renaud: 00:03

Welcome to The More the Brainier, the brave space where creative minds come to share and solve their most pressing burning questions. From Montreal, I'm your host, Christine Renaud, CEO of Braindate.

Over the last decade at Braindate, I've seen firsthand how peer-led discussions can be transformative. That's why, for each one of our three guests, I'll be guiding a conversation that helps them explore the most pressing burning questions.

And here with me in the studio today is Jane Gibb, our Creative Producer.

Jane Gibb: 00:55

Thanks Christine! Today we're joined by three incredible minds who are each tackling some of the most urgent challenges of our time through impact, education and global leadership. With us is Logan McClure-Davda, Head of Impact at TED, who spends her days amplifying world-changing ideas. We also have Navid Nathoo, Founder of the Knowledge Society, pushing the boundaries of how young people learn and solve real-world problems. And last but not least, we have Ella Robertson-McKay, Managing Director of One Young World, a global organisation shaping the next generation of change makers. Through their burning questions, we'll explore how to paint shells guilt-free, overcome the obstacles of outreach in innovative education, and reclaim the middle ground in our polarised world. Over to you, Christine.

Christine: 01:53

Thank you, Jane. And welcome back, Ella, Logan, and Navid! It's wonderful to have you all here in our brave space today. So let's get started with our last guest of the series, Ella McKay. Ella, you're not just a global leader, but also a wife, a writer, a terrible ballet dancer, your words, not mine! Amateur book binder, hostess with the mostess, and avid reader. I'm curious, what's the best book you've read this year?

Ella: 02:20

I always try to read the shortlist of the Booker Prize. And the last two Christmases, I kind of saved up. I got myself the six books as a little gift to myself. And both years I got terrible flu over Christmas. So it took me longer both times to read them. So I'm still working my way through that shortlist. And I thought James by Percival Everett was remarkable, you know, would have been a deserving winner, although Orbital, which won in the end, is phenomenal.

I'm lucky enough to be friends with a former NASA astronaut, Ron Garan, who until quite recently had spent the most time up in space on the International Space Station. So I'd actually had the opportunity to talk to him about what it's like to spend a day or months up there. But then reading it in this very beautiful short novel was very special as well. And I think if anyone's looking for a short book to read on a commute or, you know, maybe your handbag doesn't take a big h…hardback, Orbital is a beautiful, beautiful novel to dive into.

Christine: 03:20

Amazing. That sounds like something I want to read. Personally, I'm kind of the all you can read type of a reader. Like I always read about 10 books simultaneously, some of which I finish and some of which I won't. Navid and Logan, what about you? What's the best book you've read this year?

Logan: 03:38

Oh, Ella, I'm in the middle of James right now and I'm loving it! I am a Kindle book reader. I read a lot and I don't remember the names of books. So I'm going to need to think on that. And I have to read every night to turn off my brain, even if it's a couple of pages, no matter how late it is. So I'm going to think, Navid, you go first.

Navid: 03:57

For me, it's probably Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's a part of the beginning of the book that I love. And it starts off with this character, Tom Ford. And you find out he's an alien, or like he's from another planet and he's hitchhiking and he gets stuck on Earth. So he's stuck there for, you know, over a decade. And one day he goes to his friend, Arthur, and he's like, come with me, the world's gonna end. And he's like, what? Like Arthur's like, what are you talking about? The world's gonna end. He's like, just come with me, let's go to the bar, get a drink, the world's gonna end.

Christine: 04:00

And then why is that?

Navid (: 04:26

And so he's like, okay, this is weird, confusing, goes to the bar, gets a drink. And as they're talking, know, Tom Ford saying the world's going to end and this big voice comes on like a PA to earth saying, everyone, just an update in 15 minutes, your planet's going to be destroyed for an intergalactic highway. And everyone's freaking out. Like, what do mean the planet is going to get destroyed? And the PA is kind of hearing this, you know, the whoever's listening and saying, this is, you know, we weren't expecting this. We posted about this years ago on Alpha Centauri, which is only four light years away.

And I love that concept that only four light years away, that this concept that the human species might be able to be so much more developed than it is if we think differently about how we train humans and how we develop humans. And just the start of that, and then obviously, you know, it's a very fun book, entertaining, you know, futuristic, but it starts off with this concept of there's so much more out there than us and our beliefs and our current limitations on humanity, on the universe might actually be very small compared to what it could be. And so, yeah, I love how it starts and throughout the book, it just carries on that ethos and I think it's super interesting.

Logan: 05:42

Christine, I have my answer. It's Covenant of Water. I think it's beautifully written. Abraham Verghese is just an exceptional writer. It's multiple stories that are very lightly interconnected. And I think there's just beautiful moments of humanity in it.

Christine: 05:45

Wonderful, Let's get back to Ella. So Ella, professionally, you're the managing director at One Young World, which we were fortunate enough to work with when the event took place in Montreal. So it was just such an amazing experience for our team to host Braindates for all these global young leaders. So I'll let you talk about that, but it was definitely a special moment for us. Would you be able to tell us a bit more about the work you do?

Ella: 06:31

Absolutely. And it was wonderful to be in Montreal with you last year and great to work with Braindate who are such an innovative company and congratulations on that recognition that you've had recently as well. Phenomenal. Thank you. And I know that within the Montreal kind of ecosystem, you guys play such an important role.

So One Young World, we call ourselves the global community for young leaders and was co-founded by David Jones and my mother, Kate Robertson, originally part of the…We were incubated by the Havas advertising group and we became an independent charity kind five years in and 10 years later we're still here. Our founding came from Kate's thinking around two key ideas that really shaped the way she viewed the world. So she grew up in apartheid South Africa as a white South African, really benefiting from some of the most systemic aggressive racism that existed in the 20th century. And her experience of seeing South Africa transition out of apartheid into a society that didn't collapse into a civil war, into a meaningful world economy, and the role that leadership played in that, particularly of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. And that's not to disregard the wider black struggle and the grassroots movement and the wider efforts to end apartheid.

But there were transformational leaders who through their own personal expression, communication, charisma, dedication and vision did change the course of history. And so she really believes in the power of leadership. And particularly with Desmond Tutu, who we were lucky enough to have actually at the very first two One Young World summits.

There was an article which she only read about in a foreign newspaper because it wasn't reported in South Africa, of Archbishop Tutu driving down the road and seeing a kind of mob gathering on the side of the highway. And he got out to see what was going on. And there was about to be a lynching or what was called a necklacing in South Africa where they would put a tire around the head of an informant filled with gasoline and light it on fire. And the guy that this very large crowd was trying to lynch was supposedly an informant. So, you know, not necessarily a good guy.

And Archbishop Tutu, who was a very man of big heart, but small stature, as people know, is about five foot two, waded into this crowd and saved this man's life, you know, with no police or guards or anything like that. And, you know, that act of bravery and humanity is something that really stuck with Kate. And when she met him later and she said, you know, Father, what led you to do that? He said, you know, it was the right thing to do. So that was kind of one of our founding pillars.

particularly felt that in the: 2004

And it was the world saying, you know, we're sorry for your struggle. We are with you. And that's really what we try and recreate at One Young World is that sense of whatever country you're from, you have a place in the human family and we celebrate you and we want to hear from you because, in our newspapers, you know, in the West, for example, you may read about Syria one week, you may read a bit about Ukraine, Afghanistan, but we're not hearing about South Sudan. We're not hearing about the DRC. There are so many countries that you won't hear about. And that's what One Young World is for.

erges as an annual summit for: 2000

Christine: 10:58

I love it Ella, and I would love if we just dove into right now in the heart of our conversation, if you could share your burning question with us in any context you feel might help us to support you.

Ella: 11:09

Yes, so at One Young World, we, like many, really believe in dialogue and in the power of conversation and exchange of views. And one of the things that I think has really become very apparent is that we are seeing more divides and more polarisation and a world that is becoming increasingly extreme. And it feels like that we are reaching dangerous tipping points in parts of the world on this. And the burning question that I live with is...

What can we do to promote dialogue and ensure that everyone sees the value in listening to the other side? What can we redo to reclaim the center ground and bring people away from extremes? And how can we make people believe that peace is possible? I think a lot of people feel that we are on an inevitable path to World War III or more conflict. And how do we change people's vision for the future that we could all share?

Christine: 12:00

Thank you, Ella.

Logan and Navid, I would love if you shared your clarifying questions for Ella. As a reminder, it's not a moment to share insights and ideas, really just trying to understand the last question better.

Logan: 12:23

Okay, I'm following the rules and going straight to my question. And we'll share my love of your work later. Can you share a little bit about how you are currently programming your summits or provide programming for young people throughout the year that is really leaning into the bridge-building and kind of sharing different perspectives?

Christine: 12:45

That's a great question.

Ella: 12:46

Yes, as I said, our founding goal is to have 196 countries present at One Young World. So hopefully through country representation, we do a certain amount. We then try and go deeper and try and bring as many different communities from within a country together as possible and really create shared experiences for people to bond with each other and break bread and discuss things and grab a beer or have a coffee or whatever it might be.

And I think that that's really important. You know, lots of young people from America, for example, may have particular ideas about what it's like in the Middle East or what it's like in sub-Saharan Africa and meeting young people from those places, I think really opens their eyes. We do some programming with, for example, the Dutch government on trying to find young entrepreneurs in countries where young people are prone to being drawn into violence.

And we have a couple of peace programmes, but I'd be really interested in what jumps out at you as something that might be a good way to programme it or where you're seeing exciting innovation in that field.

Christine: 13:44

Amazing. Navid?

Navid: 13:45

I'm curious, what are some experiences that you've seen recently that have triggered even stronger desire to solve this? Like, is there anything that's happened in the community or something you've seen particularly?

Ella: 13:59

Yes, well we've been working on a pillar which we're trying to call Peace is Possible to really try and present this vision for a different future and there's a number of people who've come to One Young World who've helped us kind of shape that vision Queen Rania of Jordan being one

Maria Ressa from the Philippines being another, and we've done some work with Fratelli Tutti, which, I’m making quite a lot of references in our discussions, is not really typical for me!, but is the Pope's group at the Vatican who are trying to do it for brotherhood of all. And I think despite all of that, I am seeing variations in levels of curiosity from young people around the world. So there are some young people who really, really are curious, who really want to see other perspectives.

And there are many, many of those, but there are also more instances, I think, of people saying, I don't want to listen to that. Or for you to express that is innately dehumanising and therefore violent and therefore I will not listen. Or, well, for you to express that it's just, you know, woke and attacking my identity and nonsense and I don't need to listen to this woke nonsense as well. So I think there is less interest in just, I think, actually hearing from the other side and there are more reasons to dismiss the other side out of hand, rather than engaging with them in good faith.

Christine: 15:23

Amazing. Logan, did you have any follow-up questions? I feel you're questioning mine being active.

Logan: 15:30

You're totally right, Christine. guess the question, Ella, from the stage programming, how much stage programming exists in this space right now?

Ella: 15:42

We probably give about a third of our time towards this general topic of peace. And that may be peaceful sort of communities on kind of more anti-hate or anti-gangs or peace online and things like that. And some of it would be more geopolitically based. And the way that we do that will be quite varied. But I reckon we are giving a good amount of time to the conflicted world.

Christine: 16:13

Thank you, Navid and Logan. Now it's time for you, Ella, to sit back and relax. Let us do the work, take it all in. I would love, Navid or Logan, if you want to start the conversation with some thoughts.

Navid: 16:28

I'll kick it off. Difficult problem for sure. And just also being around young people, but not just young people, like the world that we're in right now, I think very polarised, especially with what we're seeing and how the algorithms are with social media, where we constantly are just getting one side piled on more and more and not seeing the other. And I think it's creating this us versus them disparity even stronger than almost any point in history.

And so it's tough to get out of the loop. I think the, I mean, the high level answer is probably empathy, but it's how do you, how do you get there? So I had two ideas and, I'll kind of share these two ideas. The first one is very uh, relevant to this conversation, which is how do we leverage Braindates to get there? And so one of the kind of thoughts I had was the structure.

It would be kind of cool where you have people getting on these Braindates, matching them with certain people that have different ideologies, but you don't actually know what the ideology is. And the first part of the conversation is just getting to know the other person. You can't actually say where you're from, your background, what you believe, anything like that. It's just you, like who are you as a person getting to know them.

The second one is then sharing their experiences. So no opinions, no perspectives, just their experiences. And the goal of the first two pieces is kind of humanise the other side. So there is no like us vs them. It's just feeling the other person as a human and then sharing their perspective and removing any sort of like opinion from it. cause then it becomes like, I, I, I, and you, you, you. like removing those words, almost having these like not to say words almost.

So that was like one thought I had is like leverage Braindates to structure more one-on-one conversations and like creating a process of that conversation to enable more human connection and therefore empathy to learn about other perspectives, not create debates.

Christine: 18:36

Navid, that reminds me of the model of Human Libraries. I don't know if you heard about that, but it's a really similar model where you can like rent a human for 30 minutes, but with the intention of learning specifically about somebody's life, that's kind of engineering empathy. So basically, for example, I've heard police officer training where they will have a person that might be a sex worker, a person who is living in the streets. And obviously people are trained and guided and they create a safe space for these conversations to happen. But really to connect with the humanity of somebody that you might see just as somebody in the street or a client. And that's a program that exists called Human Libraries. You had a second point, Navid?

Navid: 19:27

Yeah, actually, as you were talking, I got a third point. So I'll quickly go through. The second one actually had to do with TED. So the first one's Braindates, the second one's TED, which is having a group of young people or just people come together, watch a TED talk on a certain perspective, and then have a discussion about that talk after. So they know that there's a discussion to be had, and you have to kind of watch that perspective, then have a discussion around it. I think it could work really great in schools especially. But before the discussion, actually teach people how to have discussions.

So for example, teach them about steelmanning, teach them about the Socratic method, teaching them about how to ask good questions and start with curiosity. So I think having some sort of like training on discussions, how to have good discussions, leveraging a TED talk on a certain topic and having the discussion about it would be interesting.

And then the third idea I had was like starting with the leaders. We look up to these people and our leaders are not good at having these conversations. And so it trickles down. So how do we get two leaders in a room and tell them kids are watching you guys, now have the conversation. You know, what, might that look like if we're seeing leaders have a conversation between each other who have extremely opposing beliefs, but know that there's a group of young people watching them? Would they act differently in that case?

And especially if they're physically right in front of them, not online or anything, like they see the kids' eyes, they see their faces, how would they react? And I'd be curious to see when they're right in front of them and they're reminded of their kids and the young people they know in their life, would they act differently? Would they approach it with more empathy than just kind of like almost the clickbaitiness that we have right now in the media when they're talking in sound bites or whatever. So those were like the three thoughts that, that initially came to mind.

Christine: 21:22

Thank you, Navid. We had a similar conversation in our third episode with Vinod from the Future of Good, and his question was about how do we foster curious conversations in divided times? So, Ella, I suggest you listen. It was a really good conversation. And something that we mentioned, connected to what Navid just mentioned, was how can we model this behavior on stage? How can we make sure that we do prepare and guide and train people coming from the two opposite sides of, you know, the spectrum and model these curious conversations on stage. I thought that was a very, very important insight from this episode. Logan?

Logan: 22:02

Just starting with such awe and gratitude for the work. Also, there's just some wonderful things you talked about, the Olympics piece, the magic, that being a starting place for the work grounds it and makes you envision the work in a very different way, which is cool. And then hilariously, I live across from the Havas building in New York. So I like look into Havas all the time. So when you're sharing that, I'm going to chuckle.

It’s fascinating to be having this conversation, also sitting inside TED, because this is we've been on this journey for the past couple of years, and in a very real way. So I'm excited to continue the conversation with you even after this. But you know, people are so incredibly reactive in this moment. And it's not just young people. But, you know, I think young people are amazingly claiming their voice. And so we are hearing it louder. You know, their reactions in many ways more often, which we should be.

But the fact that our kind of society is being more reactive and less curious and we listen less, et cetera, is such a difficult challenge to tackle. First, I guess I start with kind of echoing the confidence you gave me in at the start of this. I think so much of the challenge here is being kind of confident in you're holding space for different perspectives and kind of maintaining a strong foothold in that center ground that we are trying to create more of.

And so I guess I just, lend you back that confidence that you gave me and the kind of challenges I'm asking myself in face. And I think too often we are trying to take on many people's input and perspective and in reality oftentimes the loudest voices are the farthest from the center. And so that tends to sway us in different directions. That definitely is true in the TED context. And so Chris really kind of owning that center ground and trying to model that sharing of different perspectives from the stage. We haven't done it correct, right in every context, but I think we're on that journey and it's been exciting to see the response to it.

The second was back to the kind of programming question that I was asking about. And this kind of goes back to what Navid, you and Christine were just talking about around modelling. I think some of the most valuable programming is less the discussion of peace or conflict. And it's actually more how do we bring about the experiences we want people to bring about the contexts on stage that we would like people to react differently to in their day-to-day lives. so figuring out how we actually kind of share less than it's controversial topics, but kind of lean into the messy space, the difficult conversations and giving then, people the tools to listen, to interpret, to debate, to disagree with afterwards.

And so thinking about the programming, like how do we create more of those experiences and then give people the real tactical tools to productively react to the things they disagree with. And I loved Navid, your suggestions for how to do so, I mean, how to have difficult conversations, trainings. I mean, there, you know, are many people are doing that type of work now. I think it's some of the most important work we can be doing as adults and young people.

And I think one of the big challenges for people in general is the lack of confidence each of us has in a difficult conversation to say we disagree or we don't know and to give ourselves, how do we give people confidence in their own perspectives or questions that they have.

Christine: 25:50

Thank you so much again. And I really feel there's something here that we're talking about that is all about how can we connect to our shared humanity. I think it's at the core of all divide there's the shared humanity. And when we're able to create experiences or programming that connects people to that, I think there's a lot of goodness there.

Logan and Navid, I'm really thankful for your insights. I'm excited to hear what Ella might be taking away from it. Ella?

Ella: 26:27

Thank you so much to all of you. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and I think that there's a lot of discussion at the moment about skills building and the role that One Year World can play and I'm sure TKS and TED as well in building skills to accompany the very meaningful conversations and big thinking that we're trying to promote is to ensure that particularly for us young leaders have the skills that go with it.

And we're actually going to have like a skills lab at the One Young World Summit this year. And I think having difficult conversations as one of the skills that we offer kind of training in at that would be would be really useful. I think there's also another piece that made that, you know, again, if we were here all day, I'm sure we could go back and forth on it would be really interesting, is marrying that with cultural competency. Because there's also the issue of for some people, certain debates will feel dehumanising to them.

Because it feels like you're questioning their existence or their right to exist or their heritage or treaties or whatever it might be. And I think that trying to think about how we kind of do the kind of Socratic method, like difficult conversations, don't be afraid to say the difficult thing, which I'm very passionate about.

And Logan and I were saying you, we were high school debaters, I really grew up understanding that debating and sometimes, you know, making it, being able to intellectually make the argument that you didn't even agree with personally was really important, but then understanding that I'm not necessarily engaged with the language of like harm and violence around this, but that for some people that is not an inviting discussion for them to join and that they aren't able to make their case within that environment because it feels like, too affronting and how we can kind of marry some of that thinking without getting into the woke snowflake, we can't even have the discussion thinking.

But we can bring some of that cultural competency into something maybe a more sophisticated offering that is still respectful of the fact that people come at a debate from different cultural standpoints.

Christine: 28:24

Absolutely. And I'm thinking also about just trauma-informed practices, especially with the variety of people you have in the audience. It's very hard for anyone to be aware, culturally aware and informed. So, no, it's definitely very challenging work and we're all very grateful for the work you do, Ella.

Logan, Navid, Ella, this concludes our second series. I'm so grateful for your time, so grateful for your energy and your generosity being here. I want to thank you. And I know who to turn to when I have my own burning question.

Logan: 29:05

Thank you, Christine and Jane. It's been such a treat.

Ella: 29:09

Thank you so much, Christine and Jane and Navid and Logan. So wonderful to spend time and build community with you guys.

Christine: 29:17

So thank you everyone and thank you so much also to Jane Gibb, our Creative Producer here at The More the Brainier and to Jenya Sverlov, our delightful sound engineer.

Jane: 29:29

Thanks Christine! This brings us to the end of our second series.

If you enjoyed today’s discussion and would like to hear when we post new episodes, please subscribe to The More the Brainier. If you have any contributions you’d like to add to Ella’s burning question we’ll be posting this episode on Braindate’s LinkedIn page and you can drop your contributions in the comments.

If you missed the other two discussions, you still have time to listen before our next series starts on May 6th with Jennie Glazer, CEO of Coqual, Fady Atallah, Creative Director at Moment Factory, and Paul Propster, former NASA, Founder of StoryLab at JPL Labs. They'll all be joining us for the next edition of The More the Brainier.

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