Season 1 / Episode 5
Gail Gallie + Holly Gordon:
Creating communication for social impact
Show Notes
Today’s conversation with two globally influential communicators, Holly Gordon and Gail Gallie, is all about reform, both social and environmental.
Holly is the Chief Impact Officer of Participant, a film financing and production company in Hollywood, founded with a mission-driven focus of telling stories that can advance positive social change in the world. Holly's job is not to make the films, but to make the films make a difference.
Gail is a campaigner for the Global Goals, Founder of Project Everyone and Project17. Her work is aimed at supporting the climate campaign ecosystem and promoting the UN Global Goals. Her aim is to use creativity to make more open and urgent collaborations possible, bringing people together to accelerate what is possible and inspire visions of a better world.
Today they are here to share the details behind their joint project Imperative 21 and the importance of narrative and stories for both social and environmental reform.
An unmissable dialogue with two exciting and globally influential communicators making real change in the fields of social and environmental impact. No fluff, no filter - straight from The Horse’s Mouth.
In today’s episode, we cover:
[02:20] Holly and Gail share the details about their joint project, Imperative 21, a coalition focused on resetting the economic system for justice interdependence and stakeholder capitalism; they also share how they are catching up with environmental optimism in the pandemic
[09:46] Gail shares the story behind Imagine If, a foundation launched as a tribute to Sir Ken Robinson and the importance of imagining things differently in order to create the future that we want
[14:25] Holly talks about her latest projects at Participant, two of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards: Judas and the Black Messiah and Collective
[20:54] The difference between communication to reach an audience vs using communication to reach people in order to create some form of action, some form of impact (strategic communication vs narrative change communication)
[38:30] Why businesses are critical to the change vs governments and importance of social media and IA as both tools of liberation and tools of destruction
[48:00] Different emotions have different effects: If you want someone to take action immediately, make them feel guilty, angry or scared; facts don’t change people’s behaviors, stories do.
Notable Quotes:
I think what we're trying to do in our work every day, is to stimulate people to imagine differently and to tell stories that help people connect with possibility and help them see how it is in all of our individual power to begin to imagine and lean into the future that we want.
Holly Gordon [11:11]
My career has been trying to look for new ways to find platforms and create stories that many people can rally around towards the same end, which is to make the world a better place.
Holly Gordon [30:27]
Even if you're a despot, global shocks are bad for business, because you can't live the life of privilege that you've dreamed of. You’re stuck like everybody else. So, I feel like the pandemic has given us a portal into the need to be different, even if you're winning at the moment. It's been exposed that even that win is very shallow and you could all fall away.
Gail Gallie [45:55]
Resources:
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Transcript
Mike Benson: Welcome to Sounds Like, the podcast brought to you by the Horse's Mouth. We explore how brands connect with their audiences through audio, hosting conversations between industry leaders and creators who have consistently forged authentic relationships with their clients and communities, no fluff, no filter, straight from the Horse's Mouth. Today, we are so happy and very lucky to speak to two extraordinary communicators working to make real world impact in the real world. Gail Gallie and Holly Gordon. Gail's a campaigner for the Global Goals, founder of Project Everyone and Project 17, running these two campaign units in pursuit of a better world is in creativity to condition the environment for change to happen. She's currently working from her cabin in the town of Bath in Somerset UK previously based in London. Holly is the chief impact officer of Participant, a film financing and production company in Hollywood, funded with a mission-driven focus of telling stories that can advance positive social change in the world. Her job is not to make the films, but to make the films make a difference. She's also very happy to be living in Ely in sunny California. Hello and welcome.
Gail Gallie: Hi.
Holly Gordon: Thanks for having us.
Gail Gallie: It's so nice to be here.
Mike Benson: How are you both today?
Holly Gordon: Really well.
Gail Gallie: Super well.
Holly Gordon: Yeah, you guys have the advantage 'cause you can tell me how the day was. My day is just beginning. So so everything's looking bright and shiny here in LA.
Gail Gallie: No, [laughs] it's really weird, isn't it? When we talk Holly, because th- we, we have the standing call that is, tends to be at a five o'clock UK time, which normal is what? Nine o'clock LA time?
Holly Gordon: Yap.
Gail Gallie: Is it? And and so I'm always like yawning and like ro- coming off a big day and these guys are like, "Morning, and it's-
Holly Gordon: Right-
Gail Gallie: sunny." And I'm like, "Ah-"
Holly Gordon: ... I got my coffee and Gail's got her wine. [ laughs]
Gail Gallie: And it's just Which is really kind of reemphasizes, especially in the winter. No, like to me anyway, dark cold ...
Holly Gordon: Yeah-
Gail Gallie: ... and LA is sunny and morning, [laughs] it couldn't be more cliche. [laughs]
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Mike Benson: [laughs] You two are working on something together at the moment. If we can talk a little bit about that, you've got a joint project that you're working on and then maybe we can just ask you to explain a little bit about your work, what you do, who you work with and your organizations. Holly, do you want to kick off?
Holly Gordon: Yeah, sure. We're working on a we're contributing to a coal- coalition called Imperative 21, which is a coalition of coalitions of business leaders who are focused on resetting the economic system for justice interdependence and sort of stakeholder capitalism. So what does that mean in English? It means that the current economic system is not working, the mass inequity extractive practices are are, are inequity and extractive practices are not sustainable and in order to change something that that's big and overwhelming, you have to start with changing people's mindset about things like I must have more, moving them to thinking, "Oh, I have enough, more is not always better." that I'm independently gonna get ahead versus actually, if my success is not linked to the success of the people around me and my community, then I have no success because we're interdependent.
So what I love about how Gail and I met is that this coalition of coalitions really lent into at the, around this time last year, a very organic kind of build of calling people into the conversation with these global calls that they set up and where they were t- talking about their vision for the future. And so, you know, it was a very chat-heavy Zoom environment, if you will. And I feel as though everything that Gail said in the chat, I was like, "Oh my gosh, plus one to Gail. Oh yes, pos-" And then I Googled her on the side and I was like, "I have to know this woman." And [laughs] so lo and behold, a year later here we are. Every week I get to be with Gail. So it's been great.
Gail Gallie: Oh, likewise, but also the mad thing don't you think is that most people on that s- both the core team, the few coalition groups, and then the wider lot, we've never met. You know, this thing has come about in the last 12, 14 months, mu- 18 months now, right. And I think Holly, you may know a few people because of the US camp, but the majority of us have not met each other. And yet we've had this intense a kind of alignment of values and mission and yeah, as you say, quite a lot of chat. There's quite a lot of time spent building these coalitions. And so, I mean, I just can't wait to meet you Holly. I've never met Holly.
Holly Gordon: I know it's true.
Gail Gallie: I can't wait to actually meet you and Cleo and like the whole gang.
Holly Gordon: It's true. 'Cause it does feel as though we've known each other forever and I think that's what can happen when you were really deeply values aligned with other people and you're connecting around a shared sense of purpose and a shared goal. I, I, you know, I go to England a lot. My family's all there and I've literally been in my itinerary. Okay, so when can I see Gail? Because we're going to have to go for a walk or, you know, whatever it is.
Gail Gallie: Sure. Don't, don't you rush? I'm gonna co- I wanna to come to LA. [laughs]
Holly Gordon: I know.
Mike Benson: So what will Imperative 21 do? What's going to happen with it? Is it going to go out to b- business leaders? Is it going to be for the general public? Gail do you know, is the- is there a plan?
Gail Gallie: Yeah, there's a plan of sorts. And the I'm gonna a pair of, I mean, I'm going to steal something Holly to- told me about her theory of change, which is you need to make content and then give people tools and then you need distribution. And the incredible thing about the Imperative 21 coalition team of stewards and allies is that they're all like distributive nodes towards a company, the B lab syst- in the B lab team and their area and their country. So we've been making some assets that we launched last year and we, and we called it the Reset Campaign. And we work, another glorious member of this coalition is an organization called Amplifier who are a US-based like artivism outfit. They do the fantastic kind of imagery that you tend to see on marches. You know, they did We The Peoples in reaction to the, to the situation over there couple of years ago with with the president.
So w- we, between us made some really great assets and then we have these amazing company leaders fr- from the B team and the B lab kind of organizations and, and, and a wider distributive network to put those assets through and our, our tasks for this year is that was the launch. How do we now get that deepened so that we create genuine kind of moving experiences where you, you experience the content rather than it just kind of happened and you did, or didn't catch it. And then it's backed up by tools with these amazing student organizations that can help take your organization fROM A to B. Because like it's all very well to say capitalism needs reforming. Even a CEO can say, "Yup, I totally back that and I really want to do that." But then you're left with this gaping li- gap of how, you know, [laughs] how do I do that? And who's with me and then how do I stay at that?
And so, so the whole system of Imperative 21 is meant to be there, to inspire at the beginning and then take you through the distribution and then all the way down to tools for change. So it's meant to be kind of a, a rolling kind of conversion program as it were to get us to a place where, I think the strapline is one of the nicest I've ever worked with, which is to create shared well-being on a healthy planet. It's just a sort of nice way of expressing what, it is lots of different phrases for people and planet and, you know, sustainable development is another one. But I think shared well-being on a healthy planet is, is a great thing for a- all of us to aim at.
Mike Benson: I like it. I'll take it.
Gail Gallie: Great. That's converted, banked.
Mike Benson: Tell us what else you're up to Gail.
Gail Gallie: I think like a lot of the world were catching up on what didn't happen last year to an extent.
Holly Gordon: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Gail Gallie: So there was a whole heap of climate action work, partnerships, events that were being planned for what was called the Super Year, 2020 was meant to be this sort of climate super year because you had the COP, the biodiversity conference and also the ocean conference. All meant to be signing, you know, improving treaties, none of which happened. So we're kind of catching up to try and get those back on track. And also to, of creatively trying to use our powers and distribution networks to just lift the mood away from COVID and towards climate optimism, because-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... people are so down and stressed. And whether you under it because you are financially pressured or whether you're under it, because your mental health is challenged people, I feel are not there in terms of going, "Yay, let's all pull together and really like one last mile for the climate." But that's what needs to happen if these conferences have to be reins- reinstated, especially in these strange, I think it's a hybrid year again. I, I don't think, although th- you know, the UK is vaccinating great like we were saying. And most of all, vaccines are not equitably distributed at all yet. And waves are coming, you know, third waves, new lockdowns. So we're up against a kind of challenging, a sort of landscape and an emotional kind of, not a barrier. It's understandable.
People are still reeling from the pandemic, we're still in it. So my, my real focus with Project Everyone and the goals at the moment is how do we move people in an appropriate fashion to look beyond the pandemic and to focus again in, on climate, because it's at the heart of shared [crosstalk 00:09:31] well-being on a healthy planet. You know, you need the healthy planet bit to, to distribute the wellbeing.
Mike Benson: Yeah. Environmental optimism is a lovely term.
Gail Gallie: And chuck in the concept of urgent and that's pretty much it. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to be an, an urgent kind of optimist.
Mike Benson: Right. And also the Ken Robinson thing, the Imagine If, the recent project.
Gail Gallie: Oh, that was, yeah. So that's just launched. Holly I didn't get to talk to you about this, I don't think so. I, I knew Sir Ken Robinson, he was an amazing speaker, visionary human, and he passed last year-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... very suddenly, and he ...
Holly Gordon: No, I didn't know that.
Gail Gallie: Yeah. He really quickly, so I mean, most people who knew him found out he was dead as opposed to found out he was ill.
Holly Gordon: Oh.
Gail Gallie: Yeah, awful. And and his last kind of wish to his daughter who I also know was "Please carry the work on. You know, please finish my book, please launch the foundation that we've been planning." ...
Holly Gordon: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Gail Gallie: ... and so she asked, "Could I help?" So that's like, aside from climate completely though klen, Ken was actually a huge climate activist and a vegan ...
Holly Gordon: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [crosstalk 00:10:34]
Gail Gallie: ... known. So we just launched a day of content in, in honor of his birthday on March the 4th ...
Holly Gordon: Oh, great.
Gail Gallie: .... and it's called Imagine If, and the premise of it all was let's, we need to think differently to-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... solve these challenges. Whatever your challenge is, you need to think differently. So we had some wonderful people responding to the provocation of Imagine If. We had like quite a few thousand people tuning in live, which is, is a good result in these days. And now the work is on to build that into a foundation to really support people who can think differently.
Holly Gordon: Just thinking about the two things you mentioned Gail, just the climate optimism and Imagine If. Those two things go together and it's really at the heart of the, that I think what we're, we're trying to do in our work every day, which is to stimulate people to imagine differently and to tell stories that help people connect with possibility and help them see how it is in all of our individual power to begin to imagine and lean into the future that we want. And I can be an optimist when I know that the conversations are happening around re-imagining, around the fact that almost every sort of operational system that we've been using is not a longterm solve.
It's been a short term solve and when I can think about a future where we look back on this sort of arguably 150 to 500 years of this mass industrialization and say, "God, what were we doing? What were thinking stealing from the earth and not giving back to the earth?" You know, biting with each other, as opposed to understanding that collectively we can, we can, we can live s- you know, prosperously and in harmony. So that's really the work of this. I think that's the work of this generation is imagining all those new systems and structures ...
Gail Gallie: And really helping people stick with that as well I think, 'cause it's you, i- it's the journey we're on, isn't it Holly? With, with the Culture Coalition, from Imperative 21.
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: You need to start with the inspiring bit that helps you imagine differently. And then you need to find ways of catching that and sustaining it.
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: That right at its heart, you still, I mean you, i- interesting on the, on the Imagine If Day a few, Ken lived in LA actually for the l- last 20 years, I think, and then he just moved back to England when he got sick. so he has, he has like this funny set of people around him. He has celebrity people, he has Ted, because he's the biggest ever TED Talk-
Holly Gordon: Right, big TED Talk, yeah.
Gail Gallie: He also has educationalists and policy people, but in the weird Hugh Jackman was a friend and he answered the provocation imagine if with such a simple thing, but it's really stayed with me, which is, imagine if we all were part of the same family, how would we act? You know-
Holly Gordon: Yeah-
Gail Gallie: And, and then imagine if you extend that concept to the animals and to nature [laughs]. Well you wouldn't, you might get pissed off with someone, but you wouldn't go and chop it down. You know, you wouldn't dream of you know, extracting horrific u- unfair labor from your cousin. You know, and, and, and if you did, your grandma would come in [laughs] and tell you to stop it.
Holly Gordon: Right, exactly-
Gail Gallie: And I just lo- it was such a simple, simple, simple piece that he said, but you know, there's a power in that of just opening up the, be- 'c- 'cause we have to find ways of opening up our minds and getting out of our habits. I mean, that's however worthy my work can be. I've still got a new iPhone, you know? And I-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... know better than most what that took and it's not good ...
Holly Gordon: Yeah, yeah-
Gail Gallie: ... but I still not going to tread it down, you know? So we all need, we all, I told you the other day, Holly, about the data impact of you know, gifts and you went, "Oh my God, don't tell me I can't even send those." [laughs] And I'm like, "Well, not at the moments."
Holly Gordon: Right.
Gail Gallie: Because they're so, you know, 'cause the internet is generally still so carbon intensive, but people are to your hope and optimism. People are imagining that again and differently at scale and speed. And that's, that's, that's what's what I get off on with my work is I can I, can I hurry people up? I'm not the one who's going to solve it, but I might be able to hurry it along by inspiring the take-up and also connecting the people who, because they've met can now go further, even faster.
Mike Benson: For sure. And, and Holly, what's your good news then? What you up to at the moment at Participant?
Holly Gordon: So we've got a g- y- we've got really good breaking news from Participant which is that two of our films from the last year were nominated for, for-
Mike Benson: Amazing.
Holly Gordon: ... multiple Oscars, Academy Awards. So the one one is a documentary and one is a feature narrative film Judas and the Black Messiah, which is a Warner Brothers Picture and tells the story of a 1960s and '70s activist in the United States by the name of Fred Hampton, who was a Black Panther. And it tells, you know, it, it really speaks to this idea of it matters who tells, you know, it matters where you get your history because as a child, any reference to the Black Panther in the history books that I read was about a sort of terrorist organization. An organization that was armed and, and, and creating havoc during what was otherwise a peaceful civil rights movement, and a sort of contrast approach to the way Martin Luther King y- forwarded change.
And what you realize when through the, through the lens of the story that that the director Shaka King tells in the Black Panther, in, in Judas and Black Messiah is that the Black Panthers were a community organization that was trying to feed, the first breakfast program ever created that was ultimately taken up by the federal government. Health, it, community health programs that were otherwise not funded. These were people who were fighting for the integrity of their community and ultimately were gunned down by their government.
And so as a, you know, middle-aged white woman watching this film we have a hi- legacy of slavery in our country that is, i- that's been there all the time, but that in order for us to progress as a country, we, we have to reckon with. It was like a toxic seed that was planted when we started this country and everything thas- subsequently has been built on that toxic seed. And so unless you start to understand what that has wrought, writ large, now so visible with COVID in terms of the numbers of people who are dying and where they're dying, you can't actually build because there was inequity built in our system.
And so Judas and the Black Messiah is a sort of slap in the cross, in the face, but most African-Americans don't need. But as a white woman to say, "Oh, the history ... " I felt betrayed, honestly. Deep betrayal from my teachers and for whoever who wrote the history books because I, I'm a, I'm a very trusting person. So if I read it, I'm like, "Oh, that must be true." Right? And so it's in terms of mindset shift, you have to start being open to the fact that everything you believe including that more is better is, is in question today, right?
That we actually have to look at the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell each other about about fundamentals in a way that I think is really interesting. So the second film that was nominated as a film called Collective. And it's directed by Alex Nanau and it tells the story of a Romanian healthcare crisis there was a there was a you may have heard of a bar fire about 10 years ago in Romania, where a bunch of young people were trapped in a-
Gail Gallie: I do, I do remember that, yeah.
Holly Gordon: ... there was power tech [crosstalk 00:17:55] problem, the big fire, the, right? And and for those who did escape, some, m- many of them were burned. And they were sent to Romanian hospitals. And what unfolds is a sort of investigative drama led by journalists who, who were asking the question, "Why did so many survivors ultimately die of their wounds?" And it turns out that there was a multi-level corruption within the healthcare system that had to do with the disinfectant that was used in the hospitals. But it's a con turn away minute by minute investigative journey of discovery and, that goes all the way to the top level of government.
And so i- i- given the healthcare crisis that we've lived through globally this year and the public health systems and how they're really showing us that they're in need of deep investment layer corruption on there, and you really have a very timely story. So I recommend them both.
Gail Gallie: Wow, I haven't, I haven't gotten to know that one. That sounds also amazing. Yeah.
Holly Gordon: And you can, you can get that in the UK.
Gail Gallie: Back on my topic is you keep hearing me talk about this new Adam Curtis series. So he covers both of those things. He, and, but the, the Black Panther a- at the episode around race, particularly I think is episode number two in the series. And, and it is again like you eye opening. There's so many events I distantly remember either as a child, seeing them on the news or actually reading about them in history. And then you realize that that is not how it was. You know, what the news re- especially in England, you know, today some dreadful thing happened over there that we had nothing to do with, that's basically the implication, but then Adam Curtis picks it apart and exposes what was going on and it's really mind blowing.
Holly Gordon: It is mind blowing-
Gail Gallie: But we need to reck- like you're saying Holly, we need to reckon with it otherwise we can't, we can't move forward. How can you expect people to change if they don't even know?
Mike Benson: Absolutely. And with communication as fragmented as it's become today ...
Gail Gallie: Right.
Mike Benson: ... which stories, which news, which reporting, which communication can you believe, which one's funded by what? Who's telling you the story? Is there an agenda behind it? Pick up a newspaper and, you know, do y- you don't really know whether it's an opinion or whether it's a fact so ...
Gail Gallie: Well, like at the moment, and a- again, relevant, because, you know, we're about to have a vaccines Mike. You know, there's a hoo-ha going on in real time about many EU countries have suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine because they are saying it may cause blood clots, but all the scientists are saying, "A- there's a- absolutely no way it causes blood clots." But then AstraZeneca and the EU had already fallen out because AstraZeneca didn't deliver [laughs] the volume they wanted because they'd given it to the British and other people, as in there's a Brexit thing going on. And then, and I'm navigating to read the, the news and the science going, "I don't know what to believe [laughs] be- because both are completely plausible to me, you know, at, at the same time. It's really, these are difficult times to, to form an, your own opinion.
Mike Benson: Right. About history, about current affairs, about what's going to work in the future. Oh, there's one other thing that we were thinking about, which is what I've been thinking about anyways. This, the difference between communication to get, you know, to reach an audience and, and potentially even to move an audience versus what you both appear to be doing are, you know, working at your very best and hardest to do, which is to use communication, to reach people, to then create some form of action, to create some form of impact. You know, so it's not just what's now in my head, it's now what's in my head, so what am I going to do next? How does that work?
Holly Gordon: We've been talking about this at Imperative 21 and, and defining it as the difference between narrative change communication and strategic communication. So narrative change communication and I would say Gail and I are actually both in the business of doing both. And one's a long-term messy game, very, very messy, right? One is narrat- narratives are the stories that we just believe to be truthful. So they're the stories that you've heard 100 times, right? And they've been often repeated. So that they you've read them, they've been repeated, et cet- et cetera, et cetera. Whereas strategic communication ... And so they, they actually frame your belief system about what is, and what isn't. Versus strategic communications is linked, can be linked to that narrative belief system, but it's actually designed to make you do something in the moment, right? And so it propels you from the an understanding to an action.
And you need both because in order for us to say, for example, design for sustainability, we have to change our narratives, which is like, there's enough nature for us to take from it forever into, there's not enough nature for us to take for it, forever and the strategic communication would be so make a compost, right? But if you start with, make a compost without changing that overarching thing, you can't, we can't change the world by one action. You know, one different call to action, depending on the day. You actually have to, we have to, we have to co-design all those changes of behavior and in order to get to a place where we co-design them, we actually have to sh- to create the demand problem to be different.
So if there's not enough earth for us to take from it, is there enough, not enough resources for us to take forever, then I'm in, I'm in the problem statement with everybody else in the world. And I'm in my own life trying to say, "Okay, how might I live differently? Because I can't continue to extract in this sort of willy nilly way.
Gail Gallie: Yeah. And when it gets really complicated, I think is when there's conflicting narratives, both of which are true. So in the climate space, you know, there is a whole generation.
Holly Gordon: Yes.
Gail Gallie: Not us, but definitely I'd say anyone under the age of 30, even 40 at the moment who, from them waking memory have known there's a problem in a crisis and it's only been getting worse and basically we're fucked. That's the, that's the sort of truth that they have lived with and that's not wrong. But at the same time, we do have an opportunity. It's this is the new narrative we need to put alongside that without denying that one, which wouldn't be credible because we have extracted and we have, you know, ruined a lot of things. The new narrative is also, we do now have the technology and the, you know, the knowledge and the, and the money and there's enough money to go around, there are enough resources to go around. We just have to do a pretty urgent reframe and a reset of how we use them.
And it's really hard to to work out which lane you're going to play in, because I think it's very hard as one org to play both lanes. So I always think of it as like the work I do is not, I call it doom comms, the, the kind of, but we all know who that might refer to you, but there's a role for doom comms because sometimes you need to doom communication to shake, you know, the head of BlackRock into thinking like, "Shit. Act- [laughs] okay, I need to, I need to give up something. I need to change something." But equally too much doom comms and no one's going to act. They're just going to put their head in you know, in their hands and, and run away.
And o- or, just think, "Okay, I've only got 20 years left, let's party." And it, it gets worse. So you have to balance the, yes, we can change your urgent optimists with the doom comm landscape. And that just requires like a level of communicative collaboration that I'm, that I think is actually beginning to happen on the climate scene actually, but it's not usual. Normally it's like, "No, I'm doing this." "No, you're doing this. And actually development's more important. What about gender? And hang on, race just popped up. What about the planet?"
You know, there used to be this real tension, even as, when I started working on this five years ago, there were arguments between, you know, the gender crew and the planet career around COP I remember in Paris about which march was going to be the biggest march during UN COP who was being unfair by sort of trying to trump the other. It's just crazy. I don't think those arguments happen now. I think there's a, there's a sense in the do-good community that's the only way to solve anyone's issue is if we all kind of you know, collaborate and, and co-architect, the narrative that is, we need to make this better.
Mike Benson: Well, it's interesting because you both come from careers in communication, Holly journalism, right?
Holly Gordon: Journalism, yap. Television news.
Mike Benson: Yeah. So TV news and Gail in, in marketing and advertising and, and, and so in a way you do come from quite competitive fields, you know? The, the news, news is always co- competitive as is advertising, you know, and, and, and it's kind of the opposite that you're working on now.
Gail Gallie: Yeah. I mean, I think as a marketer, you were always trained to try and work out what is the, you know, the USP, the unique selling proposition and the word being unique and it had to be different and better than anybody else's. And then in advertising, you know, it was all about how do you kind of make something that's, that's, you're gonna stand out from anybody else. And then your metrics are always about winning. You know, the- there's nothing about I managed to shift the category enough. You know, it's absolutely not. It's like, "Did you sell more than anyone else?" And these are the hu- I mean, I'm, I, I think I was never that comfortable with it. And I was never a happier marketer than when I was at the BBC where you didn't fe- apart from when I ran marketing for news, which was the, I was quite shocked by how competitive, even within the BBC.
I mean, it always used to make me giggle that, you know, there was this hierarchy within BBC News where, you know, the ultimate was, was the was like news nights, but they wou- and they would really look down on the nine o'clock crew as they were leaving the building. And as for the one o'clock afternoon news where they were, and then you get all the way down and the day program was at the other end, was the, the two kind of, and then today at news night we're really combustive. And that's like just one [laughs] organization, but generally at the BBC, because of its kind of purpose of, of, you know, educating and making the good, popular and the popular good, there was a spirit of, you know, collaboration, which, which I definitely was my happy spot, but I don't know, I've got a m- did you work in the UK, Holly, in news or in the US?
Holly Gordon: No, I, well, I did actually have an amazing experience doing the story about the the, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire scandal.
Gail Gallie: Oh, yeah-
Holly Gordon: Do you remember that?
Gail Gallie: Yes-
Holly Gordon: Tecwen Whittock.
Gail Gallie: The
Holly Gordon: The army major who coughed his way to-
Gail Gallie: Poofed.
Holly Gordon: ... a million pounds.
Gail Gallie: Love it.
Holly Gordon: One of-
Gail Gallie: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: ... my favorite life experiences was doing that story, but for my-
Gail Gallie: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: ... American primetime live, which was the, one of the programs that I've worked for, for a time. So no, I never worked for, wor- worked in the UK as an employer, but I, I, I came for stories and things. But ABC was the same. I was at ABC News for my whole career. And it was the same where there was a sort of pecking order for the television programs, but interestingly, that pecking order changed over time. So when I began, it was Peter Jennings and the evening news broadcast that reached, I think, you know, over 10 to 12 million people every night who sat down and watched the news. And by the time I ended, I left ABC 12 years later, it was Good Morning America, which was the primary news program because the viewership had changed so much.
And, you know, in our, in the states, the OJ Simpson Trial was really a game changing moment for the penetration of news moving from the sort of three evening anchor men who, who, who, who reached, you know, a huge proportion of the United States with their wisdom every night into a much more diversified landscape with the advent of CNN and gavel to, gavel to gavel coverage. If you remember OJ Simpson was the first case that was gavel to gavel coverage. And so people just, it became a a constant stream of information, which then of course, five years later exploded into internet access to news and information.
And I would say the sort of, the, what I, the, the, I was always competing in the incremental in news, like you were always competing in the incremental. So did I get the booking before the today show? Right? Did I get the morning, my, did my morning chat show have the, the right guest before the other morning chat shows?
Gail Gallie: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: Spent a lot, a l- the scope ...
Gail Gallie: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: ... right? The human being, I mean, I was fighting for human beings and [laughs] I won't tell some of those stories. They don't make me proud. The, the ends to which I went to make sure human beings were with me at 4:00 AM and not with my competitors [laughs] at 4:00 AM. Which is which is an unfriendly time to be fighting for a human being, I might add-
Gail Gallie: Unprofessional.
Holly Gordon: So it was always the fight for the s- to get the story first, right? But I would say John was having common. I believe a desire to make the world a better place. You don't go into journalism for money. You go-
Gail Gallie: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Holly Gordon: ... because you think that telling stories can actually have an impact on people. And so ironically, as my career progressed, the ability for one journalism organization to actually made the, make the world a better place, got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. The power of one story, got less and less and less and less po- potent. And so my career has been trying to look for new ways to find platforms and create stories that many people can rally around towards the same end, which is to make the world a better place. And so now sitting at a, you know, culture drives, beliefs, culture, beliefs drive behavior. And so I'm now sitting inside a, a company that thank goodness for the founder was, was, you know, that you can me- tell a million Hollywood stories, but we only tell stories that have some kind of social component to them.
And sometimes they're really direct action, like an inconvenient truth where it's clear like, "Oh gosh ... " To s- to parrot Gail, " ... we're fucked." we, you know, and that was 15 years ago and, oh my goodness wha- how far we've come and how far we have to go. But that was a real wake up call of really direct communication to something that is less direct like the movie wonder, which we made, which is really about compassion and kindness. And we could all as parents learn a lot from that story about how to treat each other. So so, you know, I'm still in this space of trying to use story to influence people. And the tools have just changed. And ironically, the interconnectedness of the world means that Gail and I worked together every week, even though she's in Bath and I'm in LA.
But the interconnection of the world and the, and the, and the, and the technology that's allowed that to, to happen is also the reason that our stories are it's much harder to penetrate the public consciousness, which leads me back to Imperative 21, actually M- Mike, and and why a business coalition makes sense in today's marketplace, is because as we move forward in the world, we're, we're, we're destined to trust the people we know more than the people we don't know.
So in the past, like news media has been a source of credible information for people, but now people are like, "I don't know what to believe, but I can believe my boss and I can believe my neighbor." And so I think it's ironic being a journalist who spent many, many years holding businesses accountable for their bad acts to now be someone who is so invested in business as a force for good, because people, it's a distribution system for ideas that people can trust, rally around. And businesses really influence the lives of hundreds of millions, of people all around the world. And so if they take the lead in trying to solve the intractable problems that they've helped to create that for me is a way that we can accelerate things a bit.
Mike Benson: So you say that as employers are trusted, your boss is trusted, or your manager is trusted, where's that data from? how do we know that?
Holly Gordon: An Edelman report that's like three weeks old ...
Mike Benson: Right.
Holly Gordon: That, again, it's a k- it's a killer number. I'm going to get it wrong, but something like 72% people, of, of people rate their, their employer as their most trusted source for news and information.
Mike Benson: Wow, okay.
Gail Gallie: I guess it's the la- it's like the young people's equivalent of school, isn't it?
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: Whether a you- young person like school or not, they would, they believe what the teacher says. And like you were saying about race Holly about, you know, if your-
Holly Gordon: Yeah, you believe.
Gail Gallie: ... teacher told you that the Black Panthers are terrorists, you believe them. And if head teacher says, "This is how the world is to anyone in their, in a primary or secondary school, they're going to go, "Okay." Probably more than their parents telling them. You know, that, there's got this sort of-
Mike Benson: Definitely in my home.
Gail Gallie: ... third party, you know, yes- [laughs]
Holly Gordon: I was going to say how many of you have had a child come home and say, "Mom, that's not what my teacher says." [ laughs]
Gail Gallie: Or with my re- rebellious eight-year-old, the only way I can get her to do anything really is to threaten that it's just how it is, because I'll have to tell Mrs. Hammons about that, and she's not going to like that. [laughs] And that, that is the only authority I can kind of invoke. Mrs. Hammons is a very sweet woman, but it's just the, the role.
Holly Gordon: That's right-
Gail Gallie: And so I think then, then you just try and say, we grew up with that. We all need as human beings, as babies from, from babies up, we all look to be led, right? We all looked to be le- led and held in some sort of truth. And whether it's for you then religion, or, you know, whether it's your, your employer or whether it's your teacher, you know, we all need some kind of guidance. So I think I, I can, I can totally, I, I saw that Edelman figure and I totally kind of understood it.
Holly Gordon: It makes sense, but it, but for those of us who are the age that we all are, if you told us in our 20s that our employers would be our most trusted source for news and information, we would think you were crazy.
Gail Gallie: Yeah. I think in this country, we've still got a little bit of BBC in us, haven't we? We, unlike, I think almost anywhere else in the world, we do have an, I mean, even it's cracking, but in theory, an independent source of-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... news which I think in, in this country that still comes like really high up, who do you trust?
Holly Gordon: And there are lots of journalists who were working in those traits, who would still say, "But Holly, I'm still reporting the truth." The problem is that truth has become truthy. You know, we have we have, w- i- i- there's an argument of what, who the Ke- Kellyanne Conway's famous quote, which was something like the, the alternative facts-
Gail Gallie: Yes, perfect.
Holly Gordon: ... right? Right? And, and I have two kids who are teenagers, and they literally say, "Well, where did you read that?" And my teenager one says to teenager two, and the teenager two says, "Well, this outlet." Well, you better counterbalance by reading over here. And so they're, yeah, they're like, "Well, that's not an accurate source."
Gail Gallie: But isn't this, I'm, say something I'm really fascinated by, I'd love to know what you think of this Holly. In the Oprah interview in which we went, you know, dwell for too long, but Oprah used the phrase to Megan, "How do you think the Royal family will hear today hearing your truth?" And li- it was like, it was, I can't wake up. I'm s- the thing I'm fascinated by is that, is that acknowledging that Megan was is perhaps not speaking the truth, or is it Oprah is saying your truth is as valid as their truth, but I'd never heard that phrase before, your truth. And now I think that's, that's an extension of the kind of what is true.
Holly Gordon: It's an extension of what I was taught in f- in about the Black Panthers. That was somebody's truth because it ended up in a history book.
Gail Gallie: Sure.
Holly Gordon: Right? But when you look at it from a different perspective, it's, it's, it's a different truth. And I, and you can do this with anything. We can, you can put a book in front of this camera, right? A good one at that. Right. [ laughs] [crosstalk 00:36:36] This is one of my covers.
Gail Gallie: Yeah, yeah.
Holly Gordon: My other one is-
Mike Benson: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: .... Barack Obama's Promise-
Gail Gallie: Uh-huh [affirmative].
Holly Gordon: ... Land. And Samantha Power, The education of and Idealist-
Mike Benson: No, fantastic. [crosstalk 00:36:43]
Holly Gordon: ... just my inspiring books, just at the ready here. But anyway, so the truth, the truth is that this is a cover, a book cover that has story on it, right? But if you're standing-
Gail Gallie: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Holly Gordon: .... from a different perspective-
Mike Benson: Yap.
Holly Gordon: ... the truth is that this is a book jacket with lots of little words you can't read. And so if you put someone in a court of law and say, "What's your truth? What's on this book? And someone says, "Oh, a ton of little words that you can't read." The person who's looking at it from another perspective says, "What is, are they blind? Can't they see it?" And so, you know, what you, I think, and what we have to understand as an interconnected community is that not only do we all have individual experiences of the world, but there are many sides to a, to a story if I may, right? And so it is actually the wisdom comes in not believing that your side is the only side, but in believing that someone else actually has a very skinny idea of what this is, right?
Yours is fat, theirs is skinny. And so the wisdom of knowing this whole book is to actually ask for in, for, for contributions, from people who are on all sides of it. And that to me is what's tricky about leading this generation and this moment in time is that, and that goes back to coalition-building, which is that to, in order to seek the insights of everyone who's sitting from every perspective, man, that takes time, ooh, that's not linear. Oh, that's going to be some difficult conversations. It's so much easier to work in hie- in hierarchical power structures where dominant ideas are, are, are, are, are the ones that you will follow because once you crack that dominance a, a l- a whole different conversations are, are necessary.
Gail Gallie: But I think there's a link there to why businesses are critical to the change versus governments, because governments are, need to be elected and elections increasingly need to be backed up on social media. Social media does not tolerate famously and the, you know, we've just seen in the US election and many others, it does not tolerate the, the, the ability to listen to many perspectives and to come to a consensus. It tolerate it, it leads you into polemics, you know, like, "Are you pro or anti? And if you're anti I'm going to show you more anti stuff until you're furious. You know, and if you're pro let's kind of like kill everyone who's not with us." It gets so extreme. Whereas businesses have to appeal to millions of customers all the time. And so they are constantly in the business of iteration and researching, and they're just, they find positions that are mainstream.
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: And I think that because they get that mentality, they can weigh up the impact of going into a region or a product category, and they can weigh up m- the many kind of different implications and for distress your head, that is the least damaging and the most consensus building. And, and also I think the difference with them and politicians is that longer term. And the goals work. We found that, you know, you said your business it's a 15-year framework and they're going only 15. Like, "Oh, we have one for 50 years." Like, "OKay, let's, let's ratchet back." Which governments are three, four often two? [laughs] Yeah, you know, these are, they're not long-term planners and ...
Mike Benson: Right, they're thinking about election cycles. Not about, not about generation.
Gail Gallie: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: Well, and I've actually heard that also sometimes the other way, which is that businesses, you know, we have been hearing the criticism-
Gail Gallie: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Holly Gordon: ... of businesses being quarter by quarter planners, right? And we are trying to move away from that. But I think that businesses, because they have the, they have resources to invest in long-term R&D, they're seeing the writing on the wall but-
Gail Gallie: Yes.
Holly Gordon: ... their current practices are going to ruin their businesses. So I'd love to think that this whole is a humanistic, suddenly a humanistic approach to what? To, to, to the b- from the business world. And by the way, every, every business is run by a human. And I've been hearing more and more reports-
Mike Benson: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: ... of CEOs whose children are saying to them, like, "Come on, what's your legacy going to be? Are you going to be the one that turns the tide?" So that, that, that, that group of young people who've grown up knowing that the planet is in danger is having now informed conversations with their mostly me- fathers who our at the he- a- are at the helm of power and I think that that's a very powerful dynamic for the change that we seek to make. I also just want to build something just I, I wanna talk a bit about social media because you know, social media, what's so interesting about, save for Twitter, is that in its early stages, it was the reason that the, the, the, the explosion of pe- of platforms on which people could tell the story was the reason that the hierarchical power structures and the sort of, be- began to crack, because all of these people who've been left out of conversations were no longer being disintermediated by people controlling conversation.
So the very so for example, a me-too type experience, it wasn't that women were not being me-tooed for generations, it's just that they could suddenly out the, the, the, the, the, the perpetrator in a way that was, was not managed by anyone. And so these tools are, are both are, are tools of liberation and more and more, they're also tools of destruction. And so I'm super interested to see how we reckon with these powerful artificial intelligence driven tools, or AI is the way we're going to create a more regenerative future in terms of how we're going to co-design with nature and use, build organic materials from scratch, right? But does that mean we build human beings? Maybe. Like that's creepy. So it's, you know, beyond meat-
Gail Gallie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the non meat burgers people, yeah.
Holly Gordon: ... and past, right? The, the, the g- the, the, the-
Mike Benson: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Holly Gordon: ... growth of, of, of the non-meat burgers, which are the future, because why should we be slaughtering ca- cattle all around the world? It's, it's barbaric. This is when I say, like we might look back on this time and say, "Barbarism." Right? But what if we're growing meat in a lab? What is the existential question around the s- the sanctity of biological material? So we have a lot to sort out here and it's, it's both exciting [laughs] to work on it.
Gail Gallie: Which is why everyone, we need everyone working on it 'cause none of us are going to have all the answers for sure.
Mike Benson: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Holly Gordon: That- [crosstalk 00:42:43]
Gail Gallie: I was reading a really lovely piece by Tim Berners-Lee, you know, the, the inventor of the World Wide Web. He's, he's like your Twitter example, Holly, there, there you go. Like he invented this thing to be beautiful. And he said in the early days, it was really beautiful. You know, you could find people who were like you, that you've never found before, and you could, you know, learn from each other and communicate and not be alone. And I've, and actually my prop book is called the trust manifesto written by Damian Bradfield, who is president of WeTransfer but he, he used this great analogy of the early days of the internet were like a ballet, right? Beverly Hills, everyone wanted to be there. It was amazing. Every street you found on the internet was amazing.
And now we've just filled it up with crap and neglected it. And it's, it's like the worst area of like downtown that no one wants to go to. And, and he, and Berners-Lee's the same is like, "We need to get it back because it could still be our salvation. Like it could still be beautiful." You know, for every trolling on social media, some suicidal child has found a friend that meant that they got through their problem. You know, someone being bullied has found a connection. And so k- I, you know, I know, I hope we can have both and surely just because we have AI doesn't mean we're going to do ourselves out of a job as a human, but let's see.
Holly Gordon: I always wonder about the motivation. You know, I fundamentally believe that 97% of human beings are good. Like just fundamentally wanting the right things. And I'm so always overwhelmed by the power of that 3%, the power of destruction, the power of greed, the power of corruption, the power of ... And part of it is that if you're open to many op- options for what the future might look like, or if you're, if you have a sort of gently invested view, that's positive, you're less potentially motivated than, than the, those who are hell bent on, on power or corruption, et cetera.
So I'm always sort of you know, Go Rising was built on this idea of my, the, the campaign that I, I helped to lead before coming to Participant was built on this, on this, on the early s- early storytelling, across the internet, which is if we could find other people who believed in the power of girls' education to transform their communities and we gave them world-class tools to do that work in their community themselves. We could, it was like plant all these flowers of, of, of emancipation around the world. And, and, and that's what Imperative 21 is, is built on too. So I do believe that this sort of distributed model is the salvation, but, but for those, but for those bots that are trying to make us hate each other, right? And they're super motivated, those bots, super motivated.
Gail Gallie: Oh, even are they like, 'cause I think, and, and if you can't overturn that, if, if the 3% are hell bent on keeping all the money I think the pandemic might've helped us even shift that bec- 'cause the, the super kind of 3% that I know and love some even they have been shocked by what a global shock does. Like what even I can't fly to the Caribbean, but I'm, I'm cool. I've, I have the private jet, I have the, and they're like, "No, this-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... is a global shock that is affecting everyone in the same way. And I think they don't like that. And so I think the, the ground has been fertilized for your flowers to bloom Holly in the sense that they've realized it's bad for businesses. Even, even if you're a despot, global shocks are bad for [laughs] business because you can't live-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... the life of privilege that you've dreamed of. You, you're in the, in the, stuck like everybody else. So I feel like we've, we've crea- the pandemic has given us a portal into the need to be different, even if you're winning at the moment. You've, you've, it's been exposed that even that wind is very shallow and it could, you could all fall away. I remember, I remember when Tom Hanks got it. And a, a satirist in the UK called Charlie Brooks had a very funny piece about COVID at the end of last year. But he was saying when Tom Hanks got it, is like, "What? But he's like really nice and white and rich. He's got the COVID, that's, that's not okay. That's really frightening."
But I think there was something in that, you know, that the, the heads of all of these businesses, banks, funds, they've all been affected in the same way. So I f- I hope it's given them a different perspective to look at all the other issues and realize that we are invested. We are co-invested in the same-
Mike Benson: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... system. So if the system is fundamentally rotten, even if you look like you're winning ...
Holly Gordon: And yeah. Well, I was going to say whether you're a winner or loser you're in the system. So once we start talking about individuals, you kind of lose the plot. You know, it's is, is, that, that actually the, the richest they're benefiting more obviously, but they're also a victim of the system. You know, the kind of wealth that's been accumulated over the last 30 years by individuals is so bananas. Like it's so crazy.
Gail Gallie: Did you get my 22, M- Mike? I, I found this statistic, 22 men in the world own more than every woman in Africa put together. So they hold just 22 ... I didn't even know that if they're the men, 22 individuals own more money than the entire continent of Africa, of all the women in Africa. And there's probably some of them are African males 'cause if you think about that continent, there's some rich guys there, but I mean, that is just mind blowing. And tha- but I think until you realize it's giving, going to come back and give you a problem, you know, it's gonna come back and bite your ass ...
Mike Benson: Right.
Gail Gallie: ... because it's gonna give you a global pandemic or it's gonna g- it's gonna give you a climate incident, that it's going to ground your plane ...
Mike Benson: Sure.
Gail Gallie: ... then but I think that's what we've had. I feel like that has happened.
Mike Benson: The reality check.
Gail Gallie: Yeah.
Mike Benson: The reality check that goes along. I think with the stories that you need to tell, to change people's minds and in that storytelling something that really interests me, I saw a bit footage of you Holly, talking at the Skoll World Forum about emotion and which emotions are the most powerful or have, what different effects, different emotions that you generate in your audience may have. And to quote you, you said, "If you're trying to get someone to change, if you're trying to get someone to change their behavior forever, go for inspiration and hope every time."
Holly Gordon: It's true.
Mike Benson: You talked about compassion being not very activating.
Holly Gordon: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. No compassion is a much more reflective emotion. So you feel compassionate and then you reflect, but you don't necessarily do in a moment of compassion, but you have you, you, you, you, you, i- and I'm not suggesting that that's actually not vital to the human experience and making change because the feeling of compassion is the feeling of accept, of, of connection to something that's other than you, right? And so it's, it's an a- it's an emotion that it might not be visible in its, in its act- action, but it is active and it has created something we need more than ever, which is a connection to someone else. But I did, I'll, I'll, I'll go on since what you just said is actually quite controversial. You know, really? Hope and inspiration is like the most powerful? That's ... In context, if you want to make someone, someone do something immediately, so not sort of change their trajectory forever, but if you wanna make them take an action in the immediate, make them feel guilty, make them feel angry, right?
Because those are emotions that you want just to put a stop to. And so as a human being, you'll do anything. If I make you feel guilty, you will do a lot to make me stop feeling guilty.
Gail Gallie: Or scared, I guess. Would scared be in there? Maybe scared.
Holly Gordon: Yes. Scared, angry, guilty. You know, that's a lot of what Donald Trump used. He used fear to make, to activate people, right? And, you know, i- it, depending on even your mindset, we also or 50% of us come into the world feeling frightened as our feeling, di- distrustful as our resting feeling and 50% come in feeling trustful as our resting feeling. And then if you understand that you can understand things like conservatism versus liberalism, because it makes sense to be conservative, if you're affect in the world, if you're born just with that on the side of feeling, just generally more distressful. There's nothing wrong with you. But in order for us to make, o- order for those of us who were like, "Let's make a change."
To be successful, we have to actually speak to that distrust of uncertainty, you know? And, you know, I would argue we're better to have, we're like kind of like the Supreme Court's supposed to be, like counter balancing, you know, or our, our political parties. We're supposed to be counterbalancing but if we just shout at each other and yell at each other and don't try to feel the compassion towards the needs of the other, whether that's a need for safety or a need for change, we, we w- w- w- we're, we're just, we're destined to be at this s- stopping place, which is, is, is where I feel we sometimes can get, especially in this country right now, politically for the shore, at an impasse.
Mike Benson: So how do we break through that impasse then? Listening?
Holly Gordon: Yeah. Gathering, listening, connecting really stories.
Gail Gallie: Stories. I mean, I that's, that's stories that one Mike, I sent you about that Mac-McCartney, the Children's Fire. Have you heard that Holly? He's a, he's an amazi- it's very, I think the talk is longer than this, but you, you only need to get the first few bits, but he talks about how in elder tribes times they would they would, if they needed to kind of come together and decide something, they would, they would light the fire and they would sit around it. And then they would look around the fire and think, what do we need to, to make the right decisions? And the first thing they would, so they would look to nature for guidance. And the first thing they would notice in nature is that there's a male, female balance. Otherwise the species don't carry on. So they invited women to the fire.
And then the next thing they saw from nature was that they would do anything to protect the next generation. they li- lit a children's fire. So the speech is called the Children's Fire. And all I ever need is that two lines of that thing to make me s- move me to somewhere that goes, "Okay, now I'm in the room of opening up to change and inspiration. And like, "Yeah, I want to do whatever Mike's about to tell me because I, I love that story. It's so simple."
Holly Gordon: It's really good.
Gail Gallie: When I think in this proliferation of fact, which isn't fact at all, and I read about in the states and that election just gone when people were complaining that the election had been rigged and stolen and that Trump, p- pre the riot but, you know, the Trump supporters were livid because you know, their truth was that the election had been rigged 'cause ...
Holly Gordon: That's good news narrative change right there. 300 years of a free and fair democracy chan- and a, and a shifted narrative in under, under a year, right? From the president.
Gail Gallie: Because all the other narratives that were going on in their socials and their friends were telling them that, yes, indeed, this is going to be rigged. And someone did a s- survey and showed how with every new fact you gave those people, that contravene their belief. So no look here, I have a printout of every polling station. I have CCTV footage that shows it wasn't rigged. They went deeper and deeper into their belief. You wi- well, you would say that because you're lying to me. And so facts-
Holly Gordon: Okay.
Gail Gallie: ... don't change ...
Holly Gordon: No.
Gail Gallie: .... people's behaviors. I always, I work, I do a lot of my work is with really clever scientific academic types ...
Holly Gordon: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Gail Gallie: ... who've written fantastic papers proving that this or that is the right way to go or the, and, and the way ahead, but no one is being moved by that stuff ...
Holly Gordon: No.
Gail Gallie: ... and certainly not the people who didn't believe it in the first place. A- and I think that, well, I heard a terrifying statistic about the average readership of an academic paper is 2.4. [laughs] And if you take the author and their mum out of that, no one's reading. And these are, these are great papers, but they're not being mo- no one's, elevate, no, one's turning the, the draft into a story. So I think how do we get out of here? To your question Mike is story, story, story, every time.
Mike Benson: And Robert McKee, the Story book, you know, one of the great quotes from that is ...
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Mike Benson: ... stories are the currency of human relationships, which is, you know, really what this is all about and then there's about building relationships. And then another lovely thing that you said, isn't that because in a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility. And that- [crosstalk 00:54:28]
Gail Gallie: Holly that's, that's our strap line. That's the culture coalition strap line. [laughs] That's where we should take it.
Holly Gordon: That's right. And that's what we do e- every day at Participant, which is that we look to artists. So we're not thinking about issues. We're wondering what the artists are thinking 'cause they will sh- they will show us the way.
Gail Gallie: Yeah.
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Gail Gallie: Amen.
Mike Benson: On that note, on that ...
Gail Gallie: Artistic note.
Mike Benson: ... urgent optimistic note, I think we're gonna wrap up our chat. I've got so many more questions I would love to ask you. You never know. Maybe we can do this again sometime.
Gail Gallie: Oh, when Holly comes over M- Mike 'cause you're not far from me. And Holly where's your family? Cornwell did you say?
Holly Gordon: Well some in Cornwell and then some in in, in London, just outside London. [crosstalk 00:55:08]
Gail Gallie: So you're, you're orienting southwest, I'm thinking-
Holly Gordon: Yeah, southwest, yeah.
Gail Gallie: ... so maybe we can, maybe we can meet in Oxford.
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Mike Benson: Perfect. Cool. So just in c- this is what you do at the end of podcasts, apparently you ask how can people find you on the internet or anywhere else, Holly?
Holly Gordon: So you can find me on LinkedIn, Holly Green Gordon on LinkedIn. And and on Twitter, I think I'm Holly Gordon. So you can find me there too, but I'm not so active.
Gail Gallie: Yeah, boringly, boringly, I'm the same. I'm on LinkedIn as Gail Gallie and then Twitter is @Gail galley, but I'm much more reactive on LinkedIn.
Holly Gordon: Yeah, me too.
Mike Benson: Great. And you're also project17.com and-
Holly Gordon: Yeah.
Mike Benson: ... project-everyone-
Holly Gordon: And-
Mike Benson: .... .org?
Gail Gallie: Yeah. You can get me through that.
Mike Benson: And the Holly you'll be ...
Holly Gordon: Participant.com.
Mike Benson: Yeah, participant.com. Fantastic. Guys, thank you so much.
Gail Gallie: Thanks Mike. That was really fun. Holly thanks for joining us. That was really fun.
Holly Gordon: Thanks Mike.
Mike Benson: Sounds Like is a podcast brought to you by the Horse's Mouth, sound loving, brand building conversation starting audio evangelists on a mission to help brands build deeper relationships with the people who matter most, their teams, fans, and customers. Thanks to our amazing audio producer, Alex Kennan, tech and everything in between Jess Gooden. The show's theme music was written and produced by the magnificent Will Flisk, advisers to the Horse's Mouth and all things marketing and content, Elliot Who and Steve Keeny. And I'm Mike Benson. Thanks for listening. Find us at thehorsesmouth.co or wherever you listen to podcasts. The world's listening, start the conversation.
