Practical Bravery: MIKE OMONIYI

COMMON SENSE NEWS!

In a world hooked on extremes, where every headline screams for your outrage or your wholehearted agreement—what happens to the middle ground? You might think it’s the realm of the indecisive. A wishy-washy place where no one takes a stand. But, what if today’s moderate voice is actually the most radical in the room?

In this episode of The Possibility Club, we’re diving deep into the audacious world of common sense. Because while others are looking to divide, meet a young man who’s built his mission around unity and reasonableness.

Despite his youth, our guest this week is a polymath—don’t let that intimidate you; it just means he’s darn good at many things. He’s mingled with royalty, spoken on United Nations stages, and he’s been recognised by the Financial Times as a tech influencer. He’s the CEO of The Common Sense Network, a news platform with the rebellious idea that we should understand both sides of a story.

He founded The Apex Group for CEOs, and even The BAM Project, which dares young boys to reimagine masculinity.

This is a conversation with a man who makes the ordinary, extraordinary; the sense-maker in a world gone mad – meet Micheal Omoniyi.

Key quotes:

“I have to be particularly disciplined because there’s a lot of context switching.”

“The golden thread that connects a lot of my work is I’m very big on bending the levers of power towards justice.”

“My curiosity is just too heavy, and sometimes it’s more of a problem than an asset. As you follow your curiosity, your life tends to look a bit messy.”

“On a personal level, when I go to bed at night, I think about whether I made the world somewhat brighter. Whether my unique contribution advanced things. I’m a philosophy major, I deal in big grandiose ideas. Now if there’s maybe five days, two weeks in a row where the answer to that question is no, then it’s often an indication that I need to switch things around, that maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree.”

“I used to have an afro a few years ago, it’s gone now and I’m clinging on to the last hair strands I’ve got, so I’m always asking: was this worth my afro?”

“Common Sense Network was born out of that frustration of what opposite sides of the political wing would do to each-other.”

“When I say ‘common sense’, I mean the process of deciphering or working out what you believe, through logical thinking, through exploration, just being someone who is curious, who can follow that curiosity and arrive somewhere.”

“We need to think about ways to redistribute power to make sure we don’t have so much of a ‘winner takes all’ political system.”

“I always used to say the mainstream media was broken, until I said it once and an older lady corrected me and said, no, it works for who it was made to work for.”

“You really have to be very dynamic when you’re our size, to make it through Covid, still be employing people.”

“There’s this phrase I talk about all the time, distance creates distortion, and the further we are away from something the harder it is to ascertain its virtues, its values.”

“A company is a group of people. The ‘halo effect’ thing is a real danger in today’s social media culture.”

Useful links

Mike Omoniyi’s website

Instagram

X / Twitter

@MikeOmoniyiCS
@OneYoungWorld
@TCSNetwork

The Common Sense Network https://www.tcsnetwork.co.uk/

Clement Attlee via Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee

Rory Sutherland via Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Sutherland_(advertising_executive)

The ‘Partygate’ scandal via Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partygate

Galdem goodbye letter https://gal-dem.com/gal-dem-goodbye-letter/

Al Jazeera UK leaves London, via The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/apr/12/al-jazeera-english-announces-plans-to-move-from-londons-shard-to-qatar

Novara Media https://novaramedia.com/

Spiked Online (trigger warning: homophobic disinformative content on the front page) https://www.spiked-online.com/

This episode was recorded in June 2023

Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible

Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts

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