Rebel Wisdom's David Fuller Is Trying to Talk Sense Into the Sensemakers: Is Anyone Listening?

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2022

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week's guest on The Unspeakable is British journalist, broadcaster and filmmaker David Fuller. In 2018 David founded Rebel Wisdom, a multi-format media platform devoted to intellectually honest, self-scrutinizing conversations about complex topics. The platform is part ecosystem of though that has come to be called "sense making" and Rebel Wisdom offers everything from a YouTube channel to online courses in its aim to showcase a range of thinkers and foster connections between likeminded—or even not so likeminded—people all over the world. David's very first Rebel Wisdom was an interview with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and in the years since he has become both immersed in the so-called IDW space and somewhat disenchanted with it. Meghan was a guest on Rebel Wisdom last December and spoke with David about the phenomenon of audience capture and what happens when honest brokering threatens your "brand." She invited David on The Unspeakable to continue the conversation and compare notes on how they're feeling about the heterodoxy these days. Is it failing in its initial mission to promote viewpoint diversity and becoming more like a "homodoxy?" Or is a new cohort of more nuanced, less didactic thinkers about to emerge onto the scene?

Guest Bio:

David Fuller is the founder of Rebel Wisdom, a media project that attempts to make new paradigm thinking accessible and compelling to a new generation. He worked for the UK's top news program Channel 4 News for ten years as reporter, producer and director and was the first mainstream TV journalist to cover the renaissance of psychedelic science back in 2008. David began making documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 in 2011, primarily for the Emmy award-winning series 'Unreported World'. His documentary 'The Invisible People', about the plight of disabled Syrian refugees in Lebanon was shortlisted for the "Royal Television Society awards in 2015.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's interesting looking from the UK at the US, because I think there are differences between the UK and the US.
0:09.0	I have this vague hope that it might be possible, given that we share a common language, that we might be able to help by resolving some of the issues that are kind of completely pulling your society apart.
0:25.1	Like you guys don't seem to be able to talk to each other in any meaningful way.
0:29.1	And you've got this huge split between the kind of the media classes where there seems
0:36.0	to be a much more effective firewall around certain topics in the
0:40.3	US, like the trans conversation, for example, where certain views will put you beyond the pale
0:45.5	in polite society. There's a more healthy conversation going on in the UK now. I think there
0:52.5	are a few reasons why we have a slightly healthier conversation.
0:55.9	It doesn't mean that the conversation is any less fraught, and I think it is just as heated
1:00.3	over here.
1:01.4	But I don't think that the battle lines have been drawn in quite the same way.
1:18.0	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest is British journalist,
1:25.7	broadcaster, and filmmaker David Fuller. In 2018, David founded Rebel Wisdom, a multi-format media platform devoted to a lot of the kinds of things we do around
1:29.3	here, namely attempting to get at the truth, or at least as close as possible to the truth,
1:35.1	through intellectual honesty and self-scrutiny. This ecosystem of thought has come to be called
1:41.1	sense-making, and Rebel Wisdom offers everything from a YouTube channel
1:45.8	to online courses in its aim to showcase various kinds of thinkers and foster connections
1:51.5	between like-minded or even not-so-like-minded people all over the world. He started out in
1:57.4	legacy media more than 20 years ago, working as a producer at the BBC and Channel 4 until around 2014, 2015, he, like a lot of us, started to become interested in what some podcasters and YouTubers were offering as an alternative to the prescribed narratives of ideologically driven clickbait
2:20.2	on much of mainstream media. You've heard me say that before, probably in exactly those words.
2:26.7	His very first rebel wisdom video was an interview with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson,
2:32.9	who, by the way, was not the clickbait figure he would
	...

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