I’m excited to the writing to you from The Common Sense Network office in London! The team and I have just landed back in London after two weeks in the Middle East working on a range of exciting documentaries that I’m excited to tell you more about that later.

Today, I want to reflect on something exciting that happened at Common Sense Studios yesterday. Around 60 people gathered for a special Black History Month event where we looked at African folklore, spirituality, and myth pre-colonisation. Joined by special guests Kelechi Okafor, Solomon, and Adowa from Adechi Atelier, a very charged room discussed purpose, meaning, and suffering.

If you missed the event, you are in luck because it was recorded and will be released on our YouTube channel shortly.

Subscribe on Youtube

You can subscribe now. In the meantime, we will be sharing much more about this on social media, so if you’re not following us, do so here.

— On all socials @tcsnetwork

In this episode Sope sits down with Mike for a conversation about work, identity, ambition, and the uncomfortable journey of becoming who you're meant to be.

Together, Sope and Mike explore the deeper questions behind personal growth: finding meaning beyond work, navigating uncertainty, and understanding the mental and spiritual shifts that happen when you step outside your comfort zone

FROM THE SAME CONVERSATION

What does it take to keep going when the door closes, the setback lands, or the answer is no? In this conversation, Mike and Sope get into the mindset of resilience and how they developed it. Watch Here

Are Gen Z really lazy, or are they simply a product of the environment?
Sope and Mike unpack Gen Z’s productivity, communication skills, work ethic and performance in today’s job market. Watch Here

Ex World Leader on How We Can Save The West? John Anderson.

Mike sits down with John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, for a wide-ranging conversation. They discuss political power, spirituality, personal growth, societal change, and the recurring patterns that shape civilisations, exploring what we can learn from the past and what it might take to build a stronger future.

Zelensky rallies EU support as Trump says Ukraine leader ‘more difficult to deal with than Putin

US President Donald Trump has renewed his sharp criticism of Volodymyr Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader is “more difficult to deal with than [Russian President Vladimir] Putin”.

Trump, who recently made a controversial deal with Moscow to import its diesel to the American market, called Ukraine’s fresh wave of strikes on Russian oil refineries a “disgrace”.

Zelensky had paused the attacks for three days at Trump’s request for a ceasefire on energy targets, but said on Thursday they would resume because Moscow had never stopped.

Maduro pleads not guilty to new torture-related charges in New York

Venezuela’s former leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared in court on Thursday to plead not guilty to new charges of conspiracy to commit torture.

The US government initially accused Maduro of narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and weapons-related offenses, before adding new charges against him and Flores last week.

Maduro and Flores were captured in January during a US military raid, after which they were taken to New York, where they remain in jail.

The couple has pleaded not guilty to the allegations and both have argued to have the case thrown out on the grounds that they qualify for sovereign immunity. Their trial is scheduled for June 2027.

We are getting ready for a range of events with Hyphen, our private members community for multi-hyphenate creatives. If you haven’t joined yet, now is a good time to explore what membership could mean for you.

Check Out Hyphen

Have an amazing weekend,

Community Lead,

Connect with us on socials

Website | Twitter (X) | Youtube | Linkedin | Tiktok | Facebook | Mailing List

It's genuinely been so beautiful. I'm having a great time, but we're really getting meaningful content.

I'm close to burnout because it's been 3 or 4 weeks of working without any real break. Tomorrow we are shooting our final doc before we pack down and the next day fly back to London. It's been a lot but I'm very excited for these movies to come out!

Have an amazing week!

M.T. Omoniyi

One thing. What launched, what's coming, what changed.

One day till our Black History Month event! Kelechi Okafor sits down with Adwoa and Solomon of Adeche Atelier at the Common Sense Studios for an evening of all things African spirituality and mythology. Mike will be hosting the night for a truly insightful conversation that you won’t want to miss!

We have created a special bring-a-friend discount for all of you who already have a ticket! If you have anyone in mind who would love to come, they can use this discount below to get 15% off their ticket.

Discount Code: FRIEND1

Get Your Tickets

What's happening this week

In this episode, Mike sits down with Sope Agbelusi for an honest conversation about work, identity, ambition, and the often uncomfortable process of becoming the person you’re meant to be.

Sope is an executive coach and the founder of MindsetShift, where he helps leaders work with greater clarity, confidence and impact.

Together, Sope and Mike explore the questions that sit underneath personal growth. What gives life meaning beyond the job you do? How do you keep moving when the path ahead isn’t clear? And what really changes, mentally and spiritually, when you finally step outside your comfort zone?

It’s a conversation for anyone who’s felt stuck between the life they have and the life they want. Because often, what holds us back isn’t a lack of opportunity. It’s the fear of letting go of a life we’ve grown comfortable in.

Watch Here

Opportunities and one specific ask, in that order.

In this masterclass Mike takes us through how he built his portfolio career, including the parts that didn’t work. He’ll cover how to choose the two or three pursuits that compound rather than compete, how to fund a portfolio career in the early years when nothing is paying properly yet, how to build a skills stack that makes you difficult to replace, how to sequence commitments so you are not permanently exhausted, and how to position yourself so other people can explain what you do in one sentence.

​This is for anyone building more than one thing at once, or anyone who suspects they should be and hasn’t worked out how yet.

​Tickets are free for Hyphen House members and £25 for everyone else.

Join Hyphen

Keep your notifications on and your eyes peeled for more updates across the network and have an amazing end to the week!

Okiki Adegoke

Chief of Staff - Head of Operations

Sope is an executive coach and the founder of MindsetShift, where he helps leaders work with greater clarity, confidence and impact. Before coaching, he built his career in finance, leading high-performing global teams and delivering over $1 billion in turnaround value. His coaching work spans Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies, startups, government agencies and nonprofits, including names like Nike, Google, HSBC and Shopify. He also hosts the Everyday Leadership podcast, which digs into guests’ origin stories, successes, failures, faith and perspectives on leadership.

Together, Sope and Mike explore the questions that sit underneath personal growth. What gives life meaning beyond the job you do? How do you keep moving when the path ahead isn’t clear? And what really changes, mentally and spiritually, when you finally step outside your comfort zone?

It’s a conversation for anyone who’s felt stuck between the life they have and the life they want. Because often, what holds us back isn’t a lack of opportunity. It’s the fear of letting go of a life we’ve grown comfortable in.

Listen to the full episode now, and tell us in the comments what’s been keeping you in your comfort zone.

Good Afternoon.

What happens to patriotism when one side of politics decides it speaks for humanity itself? This week we sat down with someone who left the left and was called evil for it. Melanie Phillips, journalist, author and columnist, took us through British and Western patriotism, her argument that the left now sees itself as the side of humanity, and the demonisation of the right wing.

Elsewhere, Labour held Holborn and St Pancras, the seat Keir Starmer left behind, and saw off Green leader Zack Polanski in an early test of Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

THE ONE THAT MATTERED

I Left the Left: Melanie Phillips on Being Called Evil
Melanie Phillips on why the left now casts itself as the side of humanity, and what that does to everyone who disagrees with it. She makes the case as someone who once stood on the left, which makes it far harder to wave away.

FROM THE SAME CONVERSATION

Was The Odyssey Designed to Destroy Western Civilisation? Melanie makes the case that the film celebrates Western culture, and explains why she was startled to be called “woke” for praising it. Watch Here

Why is Patriotism Declining in Britain? Melanie and Mike explore why young people in Britain appear to feel less attachment to their country than their counterparts in America and Israel. Watch Here

STILL WORTH YOUR TIME

Ex World Leader on How We Can Save The West? John Anderson.
Mike sits down with John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, for a wide-ranging conversation. They discuss political power, spirituality, personal growth, societal change, and the recurring patterns that shape civilisations, exploring what we can learn from the past and what it might take to build a stronger future.

The podcast: Rabbi Pesach Wolicki Answers the Hardest Questions on Israel, Palestine & Iran

ELSEWHERE THIS WEEK

Navi Pillay wins the Nobel Peace Prize
The South African jurist began as an anti-apartheid activist and went on to become the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. She later headed the UN commission that accused Israel of genocide. Whatever you make of that finding, a Nobel Prize puts it in front of a far bigger audience than any UN report manages.

France’s students are protesting against the education system.
The protests began in late September over the state of the education system, and unions want 10 billion euros for school repairs and a large teacher recruitment drive. Police have since arrested around 6,100 people, most of them under eighteen, and fired tear gas at pupils blockading high schools. The government says the hard left has hijacked the movement, and the hard left says ministers are politicising it ahead of the presidential election. The first reform proposals are due by the end of October.

COMING UP

For Black History Month, on Thursday 15th October. Kelechi Okafor sits down with Adwoa and Solomon of Adeche Atelier at Common Sense Studios for an evening on African spirituality and mythology, and what it means to take it seriously as an adult. Get Your Ticket

On Tuesday 27th October. Mike leads a masterclass on building a portfolio career at Common Sense Studios, Warspite Road, London SE18. It is free for Hyphen House members and £25 for everyone else, and it finishes with an open Q&A, so bring the question you have been saving.. Get Your Ticket

New guest lands on Tuesday! Find out who it is on Monday and more Editors Desks episodes on the way next week!

That’s the week. If something in here was useful, forward it to one person who’ll disagree with it.

Okiki

Chief of Staff & Head of Operations, Common Sense Network

Subscribe · Become a member · Reply to this email, we read everything!

October is here, and I am not going to pretend I am calm about it. This month we are hosting our Black History Month event, and I could not be more excited. I will be sitting down for the conversation with Kelechi Okafor, Adwoa and Solomon of Adeche Atelier. People whose work I have admired for a long time. It is the kind of conversation I have wanted to have in a room full of people for a long time, and I cannot wait to share it with you. Tickets are still available, so I hope you are as excited as I am.

Before that, a quick look back at a very good week. We had the lovely Melanie Phillips in the building for a conversation that left us wanting more. It was honest, insightful and full of perspective. The full episode is out now, watch, enjoy and share with a friend or two!

And now for some news I have been dying to share. We also had Papz in the building. For those who do not know, Papz is a comedian, and a very funny one, which made for a laughter filled afternoon. For now we cannot share any more details, but stay tuned.

It has been a month of good rooms and good people, and October is only just getting started.

Have an amazing week

M.T. Omoniyi

One thing. What launched, what's coming, what changed.

Black History Month is here and preparations for our event are ramping up! On the 15th of October 2026 Kelechi Okafor sits down with Adwoa and Solomon of Adeche Atelier at the Common Sense Studios for an evening of all things African spirituality and mythology. Mike will be hosting the night for a truly insightful conversation that you won’t want to miss!

Get Your Tickets

A spotlight on one person from the network each week.

Papz is in the building. He came through to the Common Sense Studios to strategise and discuss a super exciting project we’re bringing back! We can’t wait to share it with you all, show Papz’s brilliance, and celebrate Black History Month with greatness.

What's happening this week

In this episode, Mike sits down with Melanie Phillips, journalist, author and columnist, for a wide-ranging conversation about British and Western patriotism. They also examine her argument that the left now sees itself as the side of humanity and the demonisation of the right wing.

Watch Here

Opportunities and one specific ask, in that order.

With a new Substack and exciting new shows in the pipeline, we are now on the hunt for new writers and presenters to contribute to the network and help us continue our mission.

We are also on the lookout for new studio assistants. If you or anybody in your network are looking for flexible part-time work and want experience working within a media company and a content production studio, this is the opportunity for you! Spaces are filling up fast so please apply quickly.

Please email okiki@tcsnetwork.co.uk if you’re interested!

Keep your notifications on and your eyes peeled for more updates across the network.

Have an amazing end to the week,

Okiki Adegoke

Chief of Staff - Head of Operations

What does it mean to love your country today, and why has that become such a contested idea? Mike and Melanie explore how attitudes to national identity have shifted, what holds a shared culture together, and whether pride in Britain’s history and institutions can sit comfortably alongside an honest reckoning with its past.

The conversation also turns to one of Melanie’s central arguments: that the left has come to see itself as the side of humanity itself, and that this framing casts those on the right not simply as political opponents, but as morally suspect. Mike presses her on where this idea comes from, how it plays out in politics, the media and public debate, and what it means for a society’s ability to disagree well.

Whether you share Melanie’s views or challenge them, this is a conversation about some of the biggest questions in British public life right now: who we are, what we value, and how we talk to each other across political lines.

Watch & Listen to the full episode now, and let us know what you think in the comments.

Issue 02 — Friday 02 October 2026

Good morning.

This week we asked whether the West is in decline or simply going through a period of upheaval, and we put it to someone who once helped run a country. John Anderson, Australia's former Deputy Prime Minister, took us through political power, faith and the patterns that keep repeating across civilisations, and the two clips below came straight out of that conversation. Elsewhere, British and American troops have left Iraq and the biggest AI companies have agreed to police themselves, two very different stories about what happens when the supervision stops. Here is the lot.

THE ONE THAT MATTERED

Ex World Leader on How We Can Save The West

Mike sits down with John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, for a wide-ranging conversation. They discuss political power, spirituality, personal growth, societal change, and the recurring patterns that shape civilisations; exploring what we can learn from the past and what it might take to build a stronger future.

FROM THE SAME CONVERSATION

Is the West is in decline or simply going through a period of upheaval? Watch Now

Can suffering be a source of purpose rather than something to avoid? Watch Now

STILL WORTH YOUR TIME

The podcast: Rabbi Pesach Wolicki Answers the Hardest Questions on Israel, Palestine & Iran: Watch Here

Editor’s Desk: £72 million and nothing in return. Where Reform UK’s crypto money actually came from, why none of it is illegal, and what that tells you about British party funding. Watch Here

ELSEWHERE THIS WEEK

The coalition leaves Iraq. After more than a decade, American and British forces have left Iraq, bringing the international military mission against Islamic State to an end. The coalition arrived in 2014 after the group seized large parts of the country, and although Baghdad declared it militarily defeated in 2017, foreign troops stayed on to train Iraqi forces and head off a comeback. Iraq now carries primary responsibility for its own security, with Islamic State remnants still active and powerful Iran-aligned militias posing a different kind of problem. This is less the end of a war than the end of a chapter, and the test of whether Iraq can hold together without outside help starts now.

The AI pledge with no teeth. Donald Trump says America's biggest AI companies have agreed to police themselves, but the deal is not a law and nothing in it can be enforced. It asks the firms to build layers of safety checks as their systems grow more powerful, including internal monitoring and independent reviews. The catch is that the companies largely decide how those checks work, who carries out the external reviews and whether the results are ever published. The real question is whether they can regulate themselves as the technology advances, or whether governments will end up writing and enforcing the rules anyway.

COMING UP

New guest lands on Tuesday!

More Editors Desks episodes on the way next week!

That’s the week. If something in here was useful, forward it to one person who’ll disagree with it.

Okiki

Chief of Staff & Head of Operations, Common Sense Network

Subscribe · Become a member · Reply to this email, we read everything!

September is nearly done, and it has been a busy month. The biggest news first: Hyphen House is open. We finally unlocked the doors on our private members’ community for multi-hyphenates, the people whose job titles need a forward slash or three. I spent months imagining who would walk through them, and the real thing was better than anything I pictured. A room full of people who understand why you are starting a fourth thing while the first three still need you turns out to be a very good room to be in.

I could not be happier with how the launch went, and I am even more excited about what comes next. Hyphen House is built as a place to experiment, collaborate and make new things, and I cannot wait to watch it become whatever its members make of it. Thank you to everyone who came, and welcome to everyone still to come.

Then there is October, and with it my Birth month & Black History Month, which I am looking forward to more than I can properly say. It is a month for celebrating the people, the stories and the creativity that shape the culture we work in every day, and it could not arrive at a better moment for us, with a brand-new community of makers under one roof. Expect plenty more from us as the month unfolds.

Here is to ending September strong and walking into October with the lights on.

More soon, from wherever the signal allows.

Have an amazing week

M.T. Omoniyi

One thing. What launched, what's coming, what changed.

A great time was had. 60+ Multi Hyphenates who came through the doors: designers who also build companies, editors who also write, consultants who design clothes and one or two people whose titles I am still trying to fit on a name badge. We had bingo, drinks, live music and amazing vibes.

The room felt like exactly what we hoped for; people trading ideas, swapping numbers and quietly plotting their next thing before the first drink was finished.

Thank you to everyone who came, and to the team who made it look easy. Hyphen House is only just getting started, and if you are a multi-hyphenate who has been meaning to drop in, consider this your nudge.

Become a Member

A spotlight on one person from the network each week.

Joladé is back again! Joladé came through to wrap up some final details before we fly out to the Middle East to deliver these four exciting documentaries. His work is amazing. Please do check it out and follow his journey.

What's happening this week

In this week’s Common Sense Podcast episode, Mike sits down with John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, for a wide-ranging conversation. They discuss political power, spirituality, personal growth, societal change, and the recurring patterns that shape civilisations; exploring what we can learn from the past and what it might take to build a stronger future.

This is not an episode you want to miss, its not every day we get an Ex Government Official who reached the peak of political power sitting down with us for a conversation.

Watch Here

Opportunities and one specific ask, in that order.

With a new Substack and exciting new shows in the pipeline, we are now on the hunt for new writers and presenters to contribute to the network and help us continue our mission.

we are also on the lookout for new studio assistants. If you or anybody in your network are looking for flexible part-time work and want experience working within a media company and a content production studio, this is the opportunity for you!

Please email okiki@tcsnetwork.co.uk if you’re interested!

Keep your notifications on and your eyes peeled for more updates across the network.

Have an amazing end to the week,

Okiki Adegoke

Chief of Staff - Head of Operations

The latest episode of the Common Sense podcast is out now. We sat down with John Anderson former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with how he became who he is: his childhood, his upbringing, and the challenges that formed him, long before politics ever entered the picture.

From there we get into what’s been on a lot of minds lately what’s happening to the West, and how we start putting it right with John drawing comparisons across America, Australia, and Britain along the way. He also opens up about his own relationship with power, and why, despite a career built inside it, it was never really what drove him.

It’s an honest conversation, full of hard-won perspective, and one we think you’ll want to sit with for a while.

Watch the full episode here:

Issue 01 — Friday 25 September 2026

Good morning.

We spent this week on the questions most outlets have quietly stopped asking out loud, which is what happens when you sit a Rabbi down and ask him the hardest things we had on Israel, Palestine and Iran. He answered all of them, including the two we expected him to swerve. Everything else we published this week came out of that one conversation, which tells you how good it was. Here is the lot.

THE ONE THAT MATTERED

Israel, Palestine, Iran: A Middle East Expert Answers the Hardest Questions.

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki on why the collapse in Israel’s international standing isn’t a communications problem, what Christian Zionism gets right and what it flattens, and where the American conservative movement is quietly turning against a position it has held for forty years. He doesn’t sound like anyone else on this subject, which is the entire point.

FROM THE SAME CONVERSATION

Does Israel still care what the world thinks? The most uncomfortable answer in the episode, and the one that explains the rest of it. Watch Now

Is Netanyahu out of time? On the future of Israeli defence, and the assumption underneath it that nobody is testing. Watch Now

STILL WORTH YOUR TIME

Editor’s Desk: £72 million and nothing in return. Where Reform UK’s crypto money actually came from, why none of it is illegal, and what that tells you about British party funding. Watch Here

Editor’s Desk: one year since Charlie Kirk’s death. On political violence, and the room we sat in last year where people argued it can be justified. Watch Here

The podcast: Katharine Birbalsingh. Britain’s strictest headteacher on discipline, expectations and what schools are afraid to say. It got heated. Watch Here

ELSEWHERE THIS WEEK

The Netanyahu snub. Netanyahu made an unusually short UN visit this week, in and out within hours, with no overnight stay and, notably, no meeting with Trump. Officials called it a scheduling issue, since Trump left New York before Netanyahu arrived, but reporting suggests real frustration inside the administration over his handling of Gaza. Delegates walked out as he took the stage. He’s isolated internationally, facing an ICC warrant that limits where he can travel, and a tough election at home next month. This is the most significant of the four in terms of the shift it signals: even Israel’s closest ally seems to visibly keeping its distance in public.

Danny Tommo (Daniel Thomas), a far-right activist and former Tommy Robinson bodyguard filmed himself slashing a migrant dinghy in the Channel with a rescue worker still aboard. Hampshire Police are investigating. Separately, hundreds of anti-migrant protesters gathered at Gosport on a false rumour about where the boat would land, and six were arrested. The boat eventually landed in Dover after 51 people spent 33 hours at sea. This sits alongside the other viral clip this week of a father boarding a rescue boat ahead of his own child, and separate charges against people for assaulting an emergency worker during a boat incident. Together they show the Channel crossings story shifting from a policy debate into direct, sometimes violent, vigilante action on the water itself.

COMING UP

Hyphen House Launch is on tonight, so if you’re in London and reading this there is still room, we look forward to seeing you.

New guest lands Sunday with the trailer, episode is live on Tuesday.

More Editors Desks episodes on the way next week!

That’s the week. If something in here was useful, forward it to one person who’ll disagree with it.

Okiki

Chief of Staff & Head of Operations, Common Sense Network

Subscribe · Become a member · Reply to this email, we read everything!

I am back from my quarterly get away for some much needed rest and deep work in Amsterdam. Refreshed and ready to end the year strong.

Life right now Common Sense has reached that stage of busy where the calendar stops being a planning tool and starts reading like a dare.

In two days we open the doors on Hyphen House, a private members’ community for multi-hyphenates, the people whose job title needs a forward slash or three. Members get thoughtful programming, bespoke events and a room full of people who understand why you are starting a fourth thing while the first three still need you. It is built as a place to experiment, collaborate and make new things, and I could not be more excited to see who walks through the door.

Four days later, I fly to the Middle East with our new filmmaking crew to shoot four documentaries. Most coverage of the region arrives pre-sorted into politics, race or religion, which leaves very little room for the people who actually live there. These films begin with them: the families, traders, artists and young people whose lives rarely make the headlines. We will spend a fast and fairly sleepless fortnight working alongside directors and filmmakers on the ground, with the rest of our team flying out from London to join us.

I will do my best to document it all, though the time difference and the local WiFi may have other ideas. If you are not already following the Common Sense Network on Instagram and TikTok, now would be a very good moment to fix that. It is where the behind-the-scenes footage will live, and the clearest window into what we are building while we build it.

Have an amazing week

M.T. Omoniyi

One thing. What launched, what's coming, what changed.

We are excited to announce that our Hyphen House Launch Event is now SOLD OUT! With over 100 of you joining us this Friday, we can’t wait to see you all and share the exciting plans for the end of the year regarding Hyphen House & Common Sense.

If you missed out on a ticket, don’t fret. Hyphen House Membership is open. We have more events, workshops and co working sessions planned for our multi - hyphenates!

Become a Member

A spotlight on one person from the network each week.

Last week, we were visited by presenter, interviewer and content creator Wunmi Bello! The creator and host of The Wunmi Bello Show, Wunmi has carved out her own space in entertainment through candid and engaging conversations with some of the most exciting names across music, entertainment and culture.

She came in to discuss content strategy with our Head of Content Tomi Okeowo. Watch this space!

What's happening this week

• This week as we prepare for Black History Month. On the 15th of October 2026 Kelechi Okafor sits down with Adwoa and Solomon of Adeche Atelier at the Common Sense Studios for an evening on African spirituality and mythology, and what it means to take it seriously as an adult. Early bird tickets end tonight! Get yours now to secure your seat.

• We are hosting our first Hyphen House Launch Event! Tickets are sold out, we can’t wait to see you all.

  Get Your Ticket

Opportunities and one specific ask, in that order.

With a new Substack and exciting new shows in the pipeline, we are now on the hunt for new writers and presenters to contribute to the network and help us continue our mission.

Applications close on 25th September 2026.

Register Your Interest

Keep your notifications on and your eyes peeled for more updates across the network.

Have an amazing end to the week,

Okiki Adegoke

Chief of Staff - Head of Operations

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki (born 5 February 1970) is an Orthodox rabbi, writer, and religious Zionism activist. He is the Executive Director of Israel365 Action and co-host of the Shoulder to Shoulder podcast, and has spent years building bridges between Jewish and Christian communities on issues facing Israel.

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I hope we are all doing well. If you are connected with us online, I’m sure you’ve noticed we are now operating at much higher capacity than we’ve done in recent weeks. This is because of the amazing new members of staff I announced just last week. They’ve really hit the ground running, and our next big project is Black History Month, which is just around the corner.

Over Black history month, you’ll see a range of programming for us, please take a look and try to be a part of some of these exciting campaigns.

If you can make our event with Kelechi Okafor, Adwoa and Solomon of Adeche you’ll also get a chance to meet members of our team because this event will been held in our office!

In the meantime, take a look at a range of articles and videos that we’ve published in the last week, podcasts, editors desks, and also new articles on our substack.

Have an amazing week

M.T. Omoniyi

One thing. What launched, what's coming, what changed.

Black History Month is around the corner! On the 15th of October 2026 Kelechi Okafor sits down with Adwoa and Solomon of Adeche Atelier at the Common Sense Studios for an evening on African spirituality and mythology, and what it means to take it seriously as an adult.

Expect a real conversation about cosmology and the gods our ancestors knew by name, about ancestral veneration and why the West struggles to distinguish it from worship, about what colonialism and the mission field actually did to African spiritual life, and about the harder question underneath all of it.

You are invited and we would love to see you there.

Get Your Ticket

A spotlight on one person from the network each week.

Last week, we were visited by Joladé Olusanya. An artist whose work moves between film, photography and poetry, framing the quiet, complicated ways we love, grieve and make home.

He came in to discuss the pre production details for four upcoming documentaries we are shooting in the Middle East next month!

Make sure to subscribe and read our upcoming newsletter to hear more details about this exciting project.

Check Out Joladés Work

What's happening this week

• This week we are publishing another episode of the long awaited Common Sense Podcast. Mike sits down with Middle East expert Rabbi Pesach, where he answers the hardest questions on Israel, Palestine, Iran and America’s role in the region, from the origins of the conflict to what a realistic settlement actually looks like.

  A direct, unflinching conversation about the questions most interviews avoid. An episode you do not want to miss.

• ‘Founding 10’ applications are still open this week, spaces are quickly filling. Common Sense will support 10 up-and-coming podcasts, providing equipment, studio time and analytic support from the team.

  

Apply here

Opportunities and one specific ask, in that order.

With a new Substack and exciting new shows in the pipeline, we are now on the hunt for new writers and presenters to contribute to the network and help us continue our mission.

Applications close on 25th September 2026.

Register Your Interest

Keep your notifications on and your eyes peeled for more updates across the network.

Have an amazing end to the week,

Okiki Adegoke

Chief of Staff - Head of Operations

We sat down with Britain’s strictest head teacher to discuss our education system and how it ought to be reformed.

Katharine Moana Birbalsingh CBE (born 16 September 1973) is an education reform advocate and the founder and head teacher of Michaela Community School, a free school established in 2014 in Wembley Park, London.

Let us know what you think on youtube or in the comments section.

It’s good to be back with these updates. For anyone new here, once a week you’ll get a note from us covering what’s happening around the Common Sense Network, the people worth knowing about, and the occasional opportunity that might be useful to you. You’ll also get a sense of what we’re building behind the scenes.

If you missed the last few, you won’t know that we’ve just hired our first group of full-time staff, all working together in person from our London office. After years of running as a partly online organisation, seeing everyone in the same room has been a genuine change of pace.

The next few weeks will be spent bringing the new team up to speed and working out how we all fit together, which is the sort of thing you only get one shot at. The work carries on regardless. The Common Sense podcast is out next week, and if you look around on Substack you’ll see the articles have started again. The full content engine should be running by next week.

As always, we’d welcome your help. Give us feedback, tell us what you think, and say so when we’re missing the mark. The aim for this next chapter is to keep the network open, which means we need to keep hearing from you. Drop a comment and let us know where you stand.

Looking forward to sharing more soon. Have an amazing week.

M.T. Omoniyi

One thing. What launched, what's coming, what changed.

We are launching Hyphen, a private members club for multi-hyphenate creatives. People who refuse to stay in one lane and often are juggling multiple identities

The idea is simple: bring these people into the same room. We have created a space for them to network, collaborate, and attend events built specifically for people who don’t fit into one box.

First up: Opening Night, on 25 September 2026 at Common Sense Studios. You’re invited. We’re opening up our space for people to have a look at what we are building, meet other people in this community, and hear the vision. Expect drinks, music, and a room full of people who can’t answer “what do you do” without reaching for a comma.

It’s free, it’s open to anyone curious about what’s being built, and membership opens ahead of the launch for anyone who wants in from the start.

Free Ticket RSVP

A spotlight on one person from the network each week.

Last week, we were visited by Farouk Braimoh, Founder of RWRK STUDIO. His work is rooted in sustainability and combatting fast fashion by upcycling luxury towels into unisex garments. So far, RWRK have saved over 10,000,000 litres of water through sustainable practice.

Check out Farouk’s work, and if you do head over, let him know we sent you.

What's recording this week

Two things from us here:

• Next week, the Common Sense podcast returns, and this new season will have a range of very interesting guests. We are very excited for you to see them all. The first episode will be interesting to you if you’ve always wondered what’s going on in schools, what children are being taught, and whether our education system needs reform.

• ‘Founding 10’ is now open for applications. Common Sense will support 10 up-and-coming podcasts, providing equipment, studio time and analytic support from the team.

  

Apply here

Opportunities and one specific ask, in that order.

With a new Substack and large podcast pipeline, we are now on the hunt for new writers and presenters to contribute to the network and help us continue our mission.

If you want to bring people with different perspectives together to build understanding, trust and change, get in touch at partnerships@tcsnetwork.co.uk with your portfolio or show-reel.

Keep your notifications on and your eyes peeled for more updates across the network.

Have an amazing week,

James Woodham

Head of Social & Community Engagement

The conference was meant to be a reset after a bruising summer. On the eve of it, Channel 4 News and the investigative outfit Verbatim aired a year of undercover footage in which Reform’s head of policy James Orr and Farage’s aide Dan Jukes were filmed arranging for an American company to pay for polling the party had quietly commissioned, and later discussing a proposed £500,000 donation from a foreign source. Orr, on camera, mused that it would technically be a donation in kind before asking whether anybody was actually going to find out. Both men had stood down before delegates finished parking, and Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens went to the Met.

Farage called it entrapment, dismissed the conversations as loose pub talk, and pointed out that Verbatim was incorporated in July by people who came out of Greenpeace and the Centre for Climate Reporting. There is something in that complaint, and it is worth stating fairly. A year-long sting timed to break the night before a party conference is not a neutral act of journalism, and the delegates who told reporters they were watching a stitch-up were not being irrational. They believe they are being hunted, which they are.

The more interesting question is whether any of it moves a single vote, and my honest answer is that it probably does not. Scandal has never adhered to Farage the way it adheres to other politicians, largely because his supporters have already priced in the establishment’s hostility. What the tape does reveal is something the party cannot spin away, which is the gap between how Reform performs power and how it actually handles it.

Three obstacles stand between Farage and Downing Street, and the film touches all of them.

Can Reform govern

The first is the governing record, which is now long enough to judge. In Kent, the party’s showpiece authority, the Musk-inspired efficiency unit was supposed to expose an inferno of waste. Paul Chamberlain, one of the cabinet members running it, admitted to the Financial Times after nine months that they had assumed they would find the craziness DOGE found in America and were simply wrong.

The £40 million in savings the council trailed proved remarkably difficult to locate, opposition councillors say the finance team holds no record of them, and council tax went up by the maximum permitted anyway. The churn tells the same story from another angle, with 74 of the 677 councillors elected on Reform’s ticket in May 2025 resigning, defecting, being suspended or expelled inside twelve months, and a further sixteen departing within three weeks of the 2026 elections.

How do you professionalise this quickly

The second is professionalisation, and here Farage has genuinely delivered. Danny Kruger, Robert Jenrick, Nadhim Zahawi and Suella Braverman are not amateurs, and Kruger now runs an entire unit preparing the party for office. Serious individuals are not the same thing as a serious institution, though, and institutions are precisely what stops a head of policy from asking a camera whether anyone will find out.

You can hire a shadow chancellor in an afternoon. Building the compliance culture that keeps you out of the Electoral Commission’s inbox takes years the party may not have.

Is the parliamentary arithmetic on their side

The third is arithmetic, and it is the one his critics consistently underrate and his supporters consistently ignore. More in Common’s July model put Reform on 293 seats, thirty-three short of a majority and fifty-three down since April, with the Conservatives clawing back ground across the Home Counties and the shires. First past the post punishes a vote spread thinly across the whole country, Restore Britain is quietly grazing on Reform’s right flank, and Burnham has functioned as the circuit breaker he promised to be. Becoming the official opposition is entirely achievable on these numbers. Becoming the government requires a coalition Farage has not yet demonstrated he can assemble.

Which brings us back to the hall in Birmingham, sold out, loud, lit up, chanting his name with total conviction. That room is real and its energy is real, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not been paying attention for a decade. A full arena is still not a country, and the people Farage needs next are the ones who were never going to buy a ticket.

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I graduated from university in 2025 and have been fortunate enough to land one of the 8,383 jobs available nationally, according to Azuna, in a cohort of 1,043,665 graduates from 2024/25. The numbers are harrowing, meaning I was up against an average of 125 graduates just from my year group alone for every application I submitted.

Even going to the Job Centre didn’t improve my ability to get hired. In the first meeting, I was handed a sheet of paper with a list of job boards and essentially told “good luck”. The entire experience of having the government help with the hiring process was bleak. From being told to remove my degree from my CV to hopefully become a barista, to pitching my actual career goals and being suggested something at the other end of the spectrum really opened my eyes to how much the government truly care about this generation. However, this isn’t the first time the government has turned their back on young people.

In the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s government launched the Youth Training Scheme (YTS), a programme designed to tackle soaring youth unemployment. At the time, a quarter of 16- and 17-year-olds not in full‑time education were unemployed.

The scheme promised structured vocational training, but critics argued it offered little real education and allowed employers to exploit young people as cheap labour. Many trainees were paid allowances instead of wages, and eligibility for unemployment benefits was removed. School children across the country protested against the scheme, believing their futures were devalued.

My generation isn’t facing factory closures or the “shake-out” of industrial jobs and instead entering a labour market where AI threatens to automate the very roles traditionally used to gain experience. Graduate schemes are shrinking, junior editorial and marketing roles are being replaced by automated content tools, and employers increasingly demand “two years’ experience” for jobs that barely existed two years ago. Just like the YTS generation, today’s young people are being asked to adapt to an economy that is shifting faster than the pathways designed to support them.

And if anything, Gen X should at least recognise the pattern. They lived through a government-engineered experiment where young workers were told to be grateful for any opportunity, even when those opportunities were underpaid, unstable, or exploitative.

The main difference now is the scale. AI is reshaping all sectors as opposed to just one, yet the narrative hasn’t changed:

When the economy fails young people, we blame the young people, and this is a vicious cycle I believe Gen Z will end in coming decades due to the austerity we have faced in our younger years and the generational attitudes towards it.

Gen‑Z aren’t the problem. Nor were Gen X. The economy is, and history shows we’ve been here before. Let’s just shut up and get on with it, I suppose.

Where the Box Came From

The idea that a person should be one thing has a birthday. When Adam Smith opened The Wealth of Nations in 1776 with his famous pin factory, he was making a case about productivity that turned out to be entirely correct. Ten men who each specialised in one operation could produce forty-eight thousand pins a day, where a single generalist attempting the whole process might manage twenty. Specialisation made us rich, and nobody who enjoys modern medicine or air travel should be sentimental about the world we left behind.

What gets quoted far less often is the warning Smith buried in Book V, hundreds of pages later. The man whose whole life is spent performing a few simple operations, he wrote, “has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur.” Such a man loses the habit of exertion, Smith concluded, and “generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” The founding text of market economics contains an unflinching account of what narrow specialisation does to a soul, and we built two centuries of schooling and career design on the first half of the argument while ignoring the second.

The institutions that shaped most of us were designed to sort. Choose your options at fourteen, narrow again at sixteen, narrow again at university, then select a lane and remain in it until retirement releases you into a hobby you no longer have the energy for. This machinery was built for an economy that needed reliable components, and it worked well enough while the problems were stable and the answers were known. That economy no longer exists, though the sorting machinery grinds on regardless.

Much Learning

The alternative tradition is older, and the word for it deserves more respect than the LinkedIn version affords it. Polymath comes down to us from the Greek polymathēs, meaning to have learned much, though the concept received its first serious treatment in 1603 when the German scholar Johann von Wowern defined polymathy as knowledge of various matters drawn from all kinds of studies, “ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines.” The English word arrives in the 1620s. The idea it names had already been in circulation for two thousand years.

It arrived with an objection attached, which is worth taking seriously. Heraclitus complained that much learning does not teach understanding, and he was pointing at something real. There is a version of range that is simply avoidance, a way of remaining permanently at the shallow end of every pool because the deep end demands something of you. Anyone who has met the man with nine unfinished projects and a new certification each quarter knows the type, and I have been him more than once.

The answer to Heraclitus was never an argument. It was a series of people who went out and demonstrated otherwise. Working in the eleventh century, Al-Bīrūnī produced original work in astronomy, geography, mathematics, pharmacology, mineralogy and comparative religion, and calculated the radius of the Earth with an accuracy that ought to embarrass anyone holding a smartphone. His contemporary Ibn Sīnā wrote a medical canon that European universities were still teaching five centuries later, while also doing serious philosophy, logic and astronomy. Neither man was a dabbler. Each went deep in several places and let the depths speak to one another.

Renaissance Europe turned that pattern into an ideal and named it the uomo universale, the universal man, resting on the conviction that a person could do all things if they truly willed it. That conviction is the radical part, more so than any individual achievement it produced. The prevailing assumption had been that a man was born into a station and would die in it, that his limits arrived with him at birth and were fixed by God or by blood. The polymaths did something more consequential than learning many subjects. They expanded the boundary of what a human being was permitted to become, and every freedom we now exercise casually was won by people who refused the ceiling they were handed.

The Fox and the Hedgehog

There is a line from the Greek poet Archilochus that survives only as a fragment. The fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing. Isaiah Berlin borrowed it in 1953 to sort the great writers into two temperaments, and the distinction might have remained a literary parlour game had Philip Tetlock not decided to test it.

Tetlock spent roughly twenty years collecting political and economic forecasts from hundreds of experts, tens of thousands of predictions in total, then waited to see which came true. His results, published in Expert Political Judgment in 2005, embarrassed a good deal of the professional commentary class. The hedgehogs, who possessed one commanding theory and applied it everywhere, performed poorly, and the more famous they were the worse they tended to do. The foxes, who borrowed from several frameworks, held their conclusions loosely and tolerated contradiction, did measurably better. Range was not a charming personality quirk in that data. It was a predictor of being right.

This matters because of the kind of problem now sitting in front of us. In 1973 the design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber gave a name to problems that resist the standard method, calling them wicked. A wicked problem has no definitive formulation, no stopping rule that tells you when you are finished, no test that proves your solution correct, and every attempt to solve it changes the problem itself. Poverty is wicked. So is radicalisation, so is the design of a city, so is almost everything that actually determines the quality of human life.

Consider the collapse of public trust in information, which is the problem I have given most of my working life to. It is a technology problem, in that the distribution systems reward outrage. It is an economics problem, in that the business model of attention makes careful work unprofitable. It is a psychology problem, a journalism problem, and underneath all of it a spiritual problem about what people believe they owe to one another and to the truth. A gifted engineer sees one face of it clearly. A gifted theologian sees another. Neither will see the whole, and the person who can hold several faces at once is not a nice addition to the team. That person is the only one doing the actual job.

Authenticity Is Built, Not Excavated

Here is where the popular language lets people down. The culture tells you to find your authentic self, as though it were an object buried in a field, complete and waiting, and the work consisted of locating it. That framing has produced a great deal of expensive misery, because people go looking for a finished self, fail to find one, and conclude that something has gone wrong with them.

Kierkegaard understood this better in 1849 than most of what has been written since. The self, he argued, is not a thing you possess. It is a relation, a task, something continuously being constructed through what you choose and what you commit to. Charles Taylor made the modern case in The Ethics of Authenticity, defending authenticity as a genuine moral ideal while dismantling the shallow version of it. A self worth having is formed in dialogue with other people and measured against a horizon of significance, meaning things that matter independently of whether you happen to want them.

Put plainly, your authentic self is not a secret. It is a construction project, and every skill you acquire, every discipline you submit to, every room you enter as the least qualified person present, adds material to it. This is why reinvention is not a betrayal of who you are. It is the mechanism by which who you are becomes real. The theological version of this is older still: we are made in the image of a God who creates, which suggests that the creative, generative, world-shaping part of a person is not decoration on top of the human being but the substance of one.

My own life has followed this pattern roughly every few years, and none of it was planned. I went to Manchester on a sports scholarship, and the coaches there taught me things about repetition and discipline that no seminar room ever managed. Later I sang backing vocals for Grammy Award winners and made my own music, which gave me an ear for pacing and for the emotional architecture of a moment. That sounds abstract until you have to structure a documentary or hold a room of two thousand people, at which point it becomes the most practical training I ever received.

The websites came from poverty rather than ambition. I had a media company, a set of convictions the country needed to hear, and a quote from a designer that exceeded everything in my bank account, so I taught myself to build the thing. Video editing followed, then colour grading, then the whole unglamorous discipline of running a business. Each one began with a bill I could not pay, and each one turned out to be a way of thinking rather than merely a skill. Ways of thinking compound in a manner that individual skills never do.

The Cost, Honestly

None of this is free, so I will not pretend otherwise. Reinvention means being a beginner in public at an age when you are supposed to have arrived. It means enduring the particular discomfort of people who met you as one thing and would prefer you remain it, which they will communicate sometimes gently and sometimes not at all gently. There is real grief in laying down a version of yourself that others loved, and I have felt it every single time.

There is also the risk Heraclitus named, which is worth guarding against properly. Range without depth is just noise, a way of being interesting at parties while contributing nothing. The discipline is to go far enough into each thing that it changes how you see, then let the disciplines argue with one another inside you. Al-Bīrūnī was not collecting subjects. He was building an instrument.

Get Out of the Boat

So learn the thing you have been circling for three years. Take the course you have been researching since January, buy the camera, write the terrible first draft, apply for the role you are underqualified for, sit in the room where you understand perhaps forty per cent of what is being said. Faith, in the practical sense, amounts to moving before you can see the whole staircase, and I have yet to regret a single step that frightened me.

The world is not short of specialists, and it is not short of opinions. What it lacks are people who can stand between disciplines and translate, who have enough range to see the shape of a wicked problem and enough depth to do something about it. Those people are not born. They are assembled, slowly, out of decisions that looked at the time like detours.

You are not finished, which is the best news available to you. The box on the form was always too small. Fill in whichever answer gets you through the afternoon, then go and become the rest of it.

M.T Omoniyi

A few weeks ago I stood at the back of the studio while our new team ran through their onboarding day, and I found myself doing something I have not done in nine years of running this place. I counted the chairs. Not the people in them, the chairs, because for the first time each one belonged to somebody whose role had a name, a remit and a reason to still be there next year.

Common Sense Network has never been short of talent. Dozens of brilliant people have made this thing what it is, writers, producers, editors and organisers who gave us their best work and then went on to newsrooms and agencies and companies you would recognise. I am proud of that record. What I was quietly less proud of is that so much of it ran on goodwill, on people squeezing us into evenings and weekends around jobs that were paying their rent.

Goodwill builds something real. It does not build something permanent. This year we stopped calling ourselves a news company and started calling ourselves what we actually are, a media and insights company, and that repositioning needed a team with the room to think in years rather than in favours. So we hired properly. Four of them started this month, and I want you to meet them.

Okiki is our Chief of Staff.

He has built and run his own business, done marketing at Nike and spent time at Far Fetch, so he arrives understanding both the ambition and the operations that have to sit underneath it. He is the one who turns a good idea into a dated plan with owners attached. Since he joined I have started finding out what is in my own diary in advance, which is a novel and slightly unsettling experience.

Tomi is our Head of Content.

He joins from Global with over a decade in the music industry, an arena where attention is the only currency that clears and nobody is polite about whether your work landed. He knows the difference between something that gets made and something that gets heard. Watching him take a rough idea and see the shape of the finished thing straight away has been one of the quiet pleasures of the last few weeks.

James is our Head of Social and Community Engagement.

He comes from 9Bills with a serious record of growing social platforms, though what won me over was that he talks about community before he talks about numbers. Anyone can chase a follower count. Building something people actually want to belong to is a harder and far more useful skill, and it happens to be the one we need most right now.

Klaudijus is our Founder’s Associate, working across growth and partnerships.

He joins straight out of university with a first-class degree in mathematics, and it shows in how he works. Hand him a vague, badly framed problem and he returns with it structured, sized and broken into parts you can act on by Friday. Growth and partnerships is a role where instinct gets you moving but only the numbers tell you whether you are moving in the right direction, and he reads them

Four people, four very different sets of instincts, one shared assumption that this audience deserves better than it usually gets. I have hired before and got it wrong before, so I am not treating any of this as guaranteed. I am confident all the same, and slightly nervous in the way you only get when something matters.

You will start seeing their work soon, across the newsletter, our channels and the shows we are building. If you have thoughts on what you want more of from us, reply to this email. They will read it, which is the whole point of having them.

To everyone who has built this with us over the years, from the earliest contributors to the ones still here, thank you. The chairs are full because you made them worth sitting in.

M.T Omoniyi

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