Ideas - What intellectual influencers teach us, one video at a time

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

A young generation of thinkers is trading in the bread and butter of social media branding — lifestyle, beauty, and consumption — for intellectual content. They focus on the big questions to help followers think about a world where they can't find jobs, are overloaded with debt, and see violence everywhere. It's the kind of education money can't buy.Guests in this episode:Isabella Segalovich (@interstellar_isabellar)Ahmad Sanhouri (@conflictechoes)Louisa Munch (@louisamunchtheory)

This week on two blocks from the White House, we're talking about a Supreme Court decision that could have a big impact on American elections. The decision narrows, some argue guts the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it's expected to lead to a major redrawing of electoral maps. Join me, Paul Hunter, and my fellow Washington correspondence, Katie Simpson and Willie Lowry as we break down U.S. politics from a Canadian perspective. Find and follow two blocks from the White House, wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. This quilt looks like it came out of a fairy tale, and the story behind it kind of sounds like one. What we believe we are doing at this time is giving a new opportunity to our people.

It's easy to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Let that sink in for a second. My videos can range from being about ancient Egyptian obelists to current events, wars that are happening to my everyday life as a Jew to going to a hockey game. A young generation of thinkers is trading in the bread and butter of social media branding, lifestyle, beauty, and consumption for intellectual content. I put up clips from archive, from lectures, and from documentaries. The clips all relate to the Middle East, Palestine, the global south,

and provide perspectives, the ongoing conflicts in the region. These intellectual influencers focus on the big questions to help their young audiences think about a world in which they can't find jobs, are overloaded with debt, and see violence everywhere they look. I work in a university and all we do is talk about issues and problems and solutions and how we fix them. I think it's so important that we bridge this gap between academic, and the public because otherwise what is the use of our ideas.

My name is Isabella Segalovich or Interstellar Isabella on Instagram and TikTok or Ornament and Crime on YouTube. My name is Ahmed Sanjori and I am conflict echoes on social media. So my name is Louisa Munch. My handle on Instagram and TikTok is at Louisa Munch theory and I talk about critical theory, political issues, cultural issues on social media, and try and bridge this gap between the academy and what's going on in politics, what's going on in people's lives. Every morning, I log in to TikTok or Instagram and every day, if I can, I make a video between

one and three minutes long explaining something from art history. And art history for me is a very, very broad, can be a broad spectrum of things. And I do that for you. from an anti-authoritarian perspective. So looking at how real people around the world or everyday people, usually the people from below, the not rich, often the oppressed people, make art and find beauty in the world. I also talk about the kind of art or visual media,

architecture, et cetera, that is used to oppress people. And I like to do this in order to give people tools to help them analyze kind of the world around them, but also as a way of helping people get into art history. It's a way to get a lot of people to realize that art history is for them. I first started conflict echoes around October, 2023. After the conflict started with Israel and Gaza, I found myself watching a lot more clips on YouTube, on the internet,

watching a lot more lectures from key people involved in the... the region. And from people like Edward Saeed, Gideon Levy to Ireland Pappy, Rashid Khalidi, many different voices, many different perspectives. When I went online to Instagram, I would never see these kinds of clips being given time. Or I would always see like edited clips giving a very strong perspective. And so I became interested in the idea of putting up clips of these perspectives with hardly any editing done and seeing if they resonated with people in the same way that they resonated with me. My first kind of really, really viral video that encapsulates a lot of what I do was about a fantasy act Vietnamese architect named Adolf Loz. And he is really,

who I pin a lot of blame on in terms of why we've lost a lot of color and ornament, that is kind of surface decoration in all of our architecture. Why'd we go from like cool houses like this to this bullshit? Hi, I'm Isabella Sigelovich, and I've pretty much devoted my life to answering this question. All these little frills and curly cues, those little decorative touches. That is all called ornament. And yes, architecture overall has much less of it today. And so this video, which I published around five years ago, it was probably actually still is my most viral video of all time.

It is a just kind of a one minute long video explaining why minimalist design really overtook everything in design and architecture and to an extent art itself as well. And it's just kind of shown people why did houses go from looking like this? It was very ornamented kind of folk architecture to going to look like this. And I showed a picture of something that looked very cold and austere and minimal, something that we're much more used to seeing. You see, ornament isn't just found in old wealthy Western homes. Historically, just about every ethnic folk culture in the world has its own style of ornament, shown through murals, embroidery, tattoos, and so, so much more.

But in 1908, architect Adolf Lowe attacked both high and low. culture ornament, calling it childlike, degenerate, backwards, and even criminal. His ideas, many of which were based in racism. And I explained how Adolf Loss wrote this essay called Ornament and Crime and delivered it in 1910, basically characterizing ornament as something that was criminal, but also something that was backwards, that was meant for lesser people. And how he really, he did this in a very racist way, something that really cemented, honestly, a lot of white supremacy or really epitomize a lot of white supremacy that still exists in modern

architecture to this day. And this is something that made a lot of people really, really angry. A lot of people thought I was coming for their minimalist lifestyles. They fought back against my analysis because they thought there were certain lots of lots of elements of design history that I didn't understand. His ideas had an enormous effect on how modern architecture evolved. to be largely colorless and without any ornament. Anyway, since that video, which attracted so much disbelief, I've been gathering evidence to back myself up, and I have more than enough to fill a book, which is good,

because it is also my way of announcing that I have a contract with the... Five years later, I'm now writing a book about this very subject because every single time somebody wrote back to me saying that there was something I didn't understand. It just piqued my curiosity further, and I ended up, yeah, so that ended up leaving. to an entire book about the subject. What I found very, very quickly was that people were yearning for an explanation that was beyond simple, oh, it's just capitalism. I try to take these really

complicated topics and things that are very niche, something that you would really only generally come across if you go to architecture school and break it down for people, explain it in a way that really relates to their lives. As I started doing this more and more, I got more and more interested in older clips, in archive clips. So I would look at footage from the 90s during the Oslo Accords. I was looking at footage from the 80s during the first interfather during the invasion of Lebanon and of the PLO in the 70s. And the further back I went, the more I realized that this conversation has been ongoing, the same questions have been raised.

If you look at the experiences and the writings of the non-European peoples, you'll find that ideas of freedom, ideas of liberation, etc., are to be found in their traditions, that we're not a nation of servants. We want to be true. But haven't they learned from the grand narratives of emancipation from the best itself? I'm not sure that that's the only place they learned from. You see, we don't know enough about that. No, I wouldn't say only that.

For example, in my part of the world, the grand narratives of emancipation, liberation, and liberation precede those of the West in the Arab world. People are writing about freedom and about development and learning. When in the 12th and 13th century, you have the apex of science in the world, that's Arabic and Muslim science. Europe is in the Middle Ages, and the dark ages. Science is somewhere else.

Same with the Chinese. I mean, the idea that all the great ideas originate in Europe is a complete myth. I wanted to provide descriptions which give context without leading the audience into how they should think or how they should feel. I wanted them to approach the clip with the knowledge that's required to know who is speaking and when they are saying what they're saying, but that would be it. And from there, they should make up their own mind about how they feel about that perspective being provided. Specifically, my research is on nostalgia.

And as we've seen in politics, we're having this shift to one. nostalgia, towards Make America Great again, take back our borders, and subsequently this rise of the far right. And I wanted to take my research from this space where we write papers on it, we go to conferences, we talk about it in, you know, these rooms with very important people. But I was having these conversations at home and they didn't look the same. And I'd go home to Rochdale where I live, which is a fairly impoverished area in northwest of England. And we're not using the same language at the dinner table as I am when I teach my students in academia and I talk to professors. And I think it's so important that we bridge this gap

between academia and the public, because otherwise, what is the use of our ideas? Our ideas have to have a material impact on the world. And that's the very point of critical theory. Critical theory is about praxis. It's about, it's not just philosophy. It's not just asking questions about the world. It's asking how we can use these questions and these answers to emancipate people, to free people out of oppressive systems.

So it's kind of a philosophy with a conscience, I guess. I don't think you should pay 100,000 pounds. to understand the world. So I'm going to teach you for free. Starting off, I'm going to give you the skinniest books to understand the very basics. And I mean the basics of everything. I mean politics, philosophy. My first video is literally just on small books, skinny books, I called them, where people could understand the world in a different way. And I did skinny books, like short books because people don't have time. And I know they don't have time. Like, I don't have time. We live in a kind of a world where everybody has a shortage of time. There is a deficit of time

for everybody unless you are extremely wealthy. And I couldn't believe the response. There was immediately in 24 hours, about a quarter of a million people that had watched that video, that had shared it, that commented, that had liked it. And people asking for more. So that's what I continue to do. I continue to put videos out there with book recommendations, where people can access these ideas and think about them for themselves. And also explain terms that people often don't get sort of access to

or without studying at a university you wouldn't really talk about or see in everyday life. I see myself as an archivist, for sure. And part of that involves watching a lot of footage. It's almost like an archaeological project where you're finding these artifacts, these snippets of conversations of perspectives, which would otherwise be lost in the matters of internet footage and giving them their space.

When I first started this account, I thought of it as a hobby, as something to do on the side. Now, I don't necessarily think of it as work, but I do think of it as a duty. It's something which I should do. If I hear something that's important, that has a point of view that I believe people will engage with and will get something from it, then it should be shared. We live in an age now where, people feel so powerless and we need a way of rethinking and reimagining the world and thinking of alternatives to systems. Critical theory to me is something that enlightens and illuminates power systems. So for example, I go home and my Nana, my mum's mum, she votes for the far

and she doesn't realize, but she's endorsing a violent kind of nationalism that we have in the UK. And I love my Nana, obviously. She's my Nana. But when I go to university and we talk about nationalism, we talk about authoritarianism, we talk about fascism, we talk about fascism. That is, we understand it on a level that we can recognise it. a mile off. You can recognise it before it shows its full form in nationalism or fascism. But my Nana doesn't have that kind of language. She doesn't know what nationalism means. She doesn't know what fascism means. So if I can't talk to her about how she feels about what she's lost in this

country, so that she can also understand herself what those feelings are doing and why the messages of the far right and why the messages around narcissism. nostalgia and taking back something and protectionism is appealing to her, then truly what is the point of our ideas? We have to be able to bridge this gap so that the research that we do in academia and the research that we write about and we have these conversations in this kind of very often like academic language. It needs to have an impact on people's lives. otherwise it doesn't serve its purpose as knowledge itself. Knowledge should be empowering.

Education should be empowering and it shouldn't be walled off in places like universities. So that's what I'm trying to do with my mission on social media. It's just empower people, allow them to feel like they are part of a conversation. They can access this knowledge. They can talk about how they feel about the future, about the past, and really give people an alternative to the sort of the language of the far right, which is often easy answers to complex questions. I am always amazed and surprised by exactly what people are curious about.

It's not always straightforward and it still always surprises me. I've just been thinking, as I've actually been transitioning to do more videos on TikTok and YouTube, and Instagram, I've been starting to come to a kind of formula where I can basically predict maybe about 60%, 70% of the time, something that's really going to excite people, something that perhaps something that they see every day that is a part of their everyday lives, but they didn't know has this incredible history behind it. Or it's something that is just from an entirely other part of the planet that they had no idea existed. For example, for example, Pakistani camel barbering,

where Pakistani artists, or specifically camel barbers, that is their entire job, shave all these really intricate designs onto the sides, entire sides of a camel. One of my favorite art forms has got to be Pakistani camel barboring. It's especially common in the Sindh province, which is in the southeast part of the country. And shaving these little intricate patterns on just one side of the camel takes about eight hours.

hours. Each barber might know over a dozen of these traditional patterns, which are drawn from Raleigh, the beautiful traditional quilts of this area. I don't show up on my accounts. I don't put my name on my account and I rarely engage in the comments. I think a big part of it is because I want these documents, and I call them documents. I don't think of them as clips. I think of them as documents. And so I want these documents to stand alone. I feel like if they are a strong enough perspective, if they give a strong reason to exist, that I don't need to be there. And I don't want to, in a way, I guess, I don't want to muddy the water. I don't want to impose my ideas of that clip onto people. I find it far more fulfilling to see people come to the clips and engage with it.

it, either for or against it. And so it's less about me or less about what I think and what I'm saying about the clip and more about creating a conversation or creating a space where people can come and engage. You know, social media is built around sound bites. You can't have an hour long a lecture or on Instagram. So you can only have a snippet, sometimes 90 seconds or three minutes. But in that time, you can have one point being made. And from that, that can open the door to a much bigger conversation. So why then does a colonial power have to impose their language on the colonized? Because in a way, if you get at the language

of a people in a way you are getting at that which cements the whole economic, political, cultural, social, psychological aspects of that community.

Language, indeed, is part of a vast naming system. You name, you own. Naming is a process of owning because is only by naming that you identify, you know.

And if you identify, you're able to isolate the different elements in one's environment. I don't want you know the novel. I mean, is Robinson Crusoe? You know, when there's a, well, Robinson Crusoe, you know, is a shipwrecked on an island, and he discovered somebody called Friday. Okay? and is assumed in their relationship that Friday has no language. And here comes a moment when Friday of Rubik's Cruceau is teaching Friday language.

So the first thing he does is, it's a naming. Naming. You know, he says, your name is Friday. Note, he does not ask Friday, what is your name? he said no your name is Friday I name you and my name is master so thereafter whenever Friday presumably is asked by somebody who is that man oh he's master okay so note is a cruiser who names Friday and also names himself

and by so doing establishes a certain relationship between them. On the body of Friday is planted crusoeic memory. And if Crusoe is an English, what he is getting on the body of Friday is English memory. So his body, from then onwards, carries that memory. People have reached out to me and said to me, why did you put this clip of this person?

Why are you platforming them? And I don't think of it as platforming. And I think that's why it's also important for me not to push too much of my own feelings and emotions around a clip. So that is not a case of me platforming someone because I want to endorse them, but because I find something interesting in what they're saying, or I find something rewarding in hearing this point of view, even if it doesn't even sit well with what I think. I think it's more important that people come to content with an open mind

without thinking I'm imposing a point of view onto them. You might not realise it, but you actually spend loads of time in non-places. So think about like the supermarket, the train station, the service station, the airport, the spaces of transition, but you're not meant to be there very long. And God forbid you speak to anyone. I've been to London, yeah? I've been on that tube. Like, God forbid you even say, oh, sorry, love.

what's that about? Anyway, I'll tell you what it's about. The public, in public transport, has been replaced with finance capital, which means everything is mediated by finance, not by people. In Mark R.J's book on Nonplaces, he talks about how in these spaces you are only confronted with the image of yourself. But it's a strange image. It's an image of suspicion. You have to prove your innocence at every single point. You have to get your credit card out at the supermarket. You have to get your passport out of the checking desk. See it, say it's sorted if I may. It's an incredibly hostile place to be in, which is kind of ironic when you think about public transport. You have a sense that you are surrounded by people, but you are incredibly alone. The response has been incredible.

It's been unbelievable. I have only been doing this since July last year. And I've grown, I've got over 300,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, and I never expected that. But I get messages every single day thanking me for giving them a means of talking about things and a hope for the future that could be different. I get a lot of people who say, you know, I'm a joiner, I'm a plasterer, I'm a bricklayer, and I didn't have these opportunities to think about the world in this way. And, you know, these books that you talk about and these ideas, it's given me a means of exploring something I thought was not for me. And that's the point, you know, education, this kind of knowledge, critical theory, it's for everybody.

That's the point of it. It's also the point of this episode of ideas about the world of intellectual influencers. I'm Nala Ayyad. You know, every day on Up First, NPR's Golden Globe nominated Morning News Podcast. we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story are questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow up first wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why. On social media, virality is everything, or just about. Popular creators have a kind of secret sauce that goes into their videos, allowing them to, sometimes hack the algorithm that boosts certain kinds of content and not others. That's why people making educational content find it frustrating to see videos filled with sensational claims or outright lies go viral. I think one of the most difficult parts about doing education on these sort of private, enormous big tech platforms is that these algorithms really, really prioritize misinformation.

And the reason they prioritize misinformation is that they know what gets clicks the easiest, which are videos that are really scary sounding or bombastic sounding, but even are really overly simple explanations for the state of things in the world. And so very quickly you get into conspiracy theories. The point of mandatory vaccination is to identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the free thinkers, the men with high testosterone levels, and anyone else who does not love Joe Biden, and make them leave immediately.

It's a takeover of the U.S. military. Conspiracy theories travel at the speed of light, 10 times faster than pretty much anything I'll ever put out will travel or will go viral. There's already a lot of tension in constantly trying to fight the algorithm's bias towards sensationalism. Now add in the possibility that in that, But fight, you could suddenly find your account suspended.

Honestly, that does make me nervous, definitely. It's a very precarious space. In a way, we're at the mercy of these platforms because they are private entities, but they also have huge audiences. So if I want these clips to reach as many people as possible for them to engage with them, I have to use them. But it's difficult.

The idea that we might, you know, at any point your account could be taken down. But for creators, the vagaries of social media platforms are superseded by the large number of people hanging out there. And if enough of those people are watching, there is still hope. This is where power shifts. This is where power happens. And if people like Donald Trump can win an election on Twitter and use that plan, then we can also use it in a way that allows people to feel empowered and not feel like this is just a place, emotional rage and things like that. I think it is difficult when you know who owns these platforms, but there is an opportunity, I think, to shift the way that we see

culture. There are a lot of people that dismiss social media in general as something that is simply there to rot our brains. And unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to the fact that looking at tons of videos at once, you know, scrolling a lot, which I am certainly guilty of, is something that is really bad, you know, for our brains if we do it for too long in the day. And the thing is that we are simply not in the place to dismiss social media, to just say, well, I'm not going to go on it anymore. I'm just going to ignore it and everybody should get off of it. Because it is going to exist in the current moment that we're in. It exists now and it is forming the opinions of millions, if not billions, of people.

Iran is the place that made me who I am today. When I was My dad was invited on a business trip to Iran. And despite our friends and family telling us that we would be murdered, my mom decided, let's make this into a family vacation. This ended up quite literally changing the way I think. I genuinely believe that the architecture altered my brain chemistry as a child and put me on a relentless path to find, appreciate, and celebrate. One series of videos I made recently was about Iranian culture.

different aspects of Iranian culture from veiling practices or masking practices in the south, actually near the Strait of Hormuz, to Murkanas, which are the beautiful kind of honeycomb-like ceilings that you find in a lot of Iranian mosques. And the reason people really reacted very strongly was because partially it was personal. I was speaking from an experience that I was lucky to have to go to Iran when I was a little girl for two weeks where my family met dozens and dozens of people. We went with our Iranian friends. We were greeted with flowers, chocolates, and feast after feast after feast, party after party as people welcomed us into their homes with traditional Iranian hospitality. That is probably the most kind and welcoming in the world.

And it was actually a very formative experience for everything that I'm talking about here with you. And the reason I think people responded so strongly to this was that I was speaking about folk art, folk practices. Art that is often, you know, is not about one particular artist who has a solo show and an exhibition, but the art of a people. These are the videos that kind of, they matter to me the most because I want to speak to the art of a people and how what I wanted to show in these videos, how it couldn't be possible that our president, you know, Donald Trump, how it couldn't be possible that he was so-called bombing this country in order to free these people when their cultural heritage was and is still being destroyed as we speak. Unfortunately, right now is something

that's hanging over me very heavily today. And I know that that was something that really elicited a strong response from people. So when I saw that people were just gravitating towards that so much, I decided to do more. I feel like this is an emergency. I feel like I have absolutely no choice but to go out there and talk to people and have dialogue. That is the point of education. Paulo Freya is one of my absolute inspirations. It's like the grandfather of Chris Kul's theory, really. and he talks about we need to be able to name the world to change the world and that is absolutely my ethos. I would say to you that I am a curious being.

I have been a curious being. But in a certain moment of the process of being curious, in order to understand the others, I discover that I have it to create in myself a certain virtue without which it's difficult for me to understand the others. The virtue of tolerance, it is through the exercise of tolerance, that I discover the rich possibility of doing things

and learning different things with different people. This is the dialogue, the education, the knowledge, this sort of language, it's about constructing a different reality, understanding the one we have to emancipate people, to understand where oppression lies. Oppression is so elusive. It's so implicit a lot of the time. And what I'm doing is kind of out of desperation for a different world, for a different alternative to the socio-economic systems that we have. You know, we know that the economic system we have is failing. We're in a time of crisis.

We have the rising authoritarianism across the world. And if we don't, we don't, take education back into, you know, the public good where it belongs, then we just create a world where knowledge is sealed off only to be accessed by the elite. And that is an incredibly dangerous space to be in. And so I think we're in a place where actually the, you know, we as educators, whether we're writers, whether we're teachers or museums, we actually have the obligation at this point, to do what we can, to introduce our voice, to introduce the truth, and to learn a lot of, and to learn the different methods, to learn what it takes to get our truth into the public. Right. We don't really have the luxury of ignoring what is happening on social media,

because if we do, it's the only thing that will spread there, that will exist there, is misinformation. There are videos that I find fun to do. I love doing videos about German embroidery from my culture, about small fun facts, but I do feel like I have a sort of ethical drive, something I can't look away from, which is to speak out against atrocities, which is to speak out against oppression, whether it's against Iranian people, the Iranian people, against the Palestinian people are against the many, many communities here at home who are currently facing the threats of fascism. And what I find is that, yes, it is harder often to get those ideas through, but that people go onto social media to find information because they are

curious and they want to put a, they want an explanation for all of these incredibly, mystifyingly horrible things that are happening all around them. And so they're either going to find it in a conspiracy theory or, as I hope, they'll find it in one of the videos or post from one of my fellow educational content creators. Because what I have found that on one hand, you know, there's a lot of toxicity does come from these platforms. On the other hand, people find whole new communities there, but also they learn about the world in a way that they just didn't have the opportunity to do before. And there are a lot of people that have greatly expanded the way that they look at the world, the way they look at humanity as something that is far more complicated than

something that just exists beyond people that look and think like them. Civilization is, how do you contact the other people? Do you know how to love? Do you know how to care? This is civilization. If you go to a very poor man here and he has nothing to give you, he'll go and borrow from his neighbor's loaf of bread and he'll offer it to you. In Europe, you may faint and drop dead in the street and people who just walk away from you and they don't give a shit. So we have to know what the world civilization means.

And then we could say first world, third world, then. We live in a time of very low trust when it comes to conventional media and even more so with social media. There's still a high mistrust of social media due to AI. These are really important questions. And we're living through a time where the way we... process and engage with media is changing. I want people to be able to trust and to be able to know that when they see a clip, that is a clip of that person making that point. Or even if the clip is edited, it's clear that it's been edited or it's edited in a way where it hasn't digressed or moved

away from the core point that's being made. I think the fact that there's so many people who may oppose the points of view who also follow is because they see the value in that. Nobody wants to be lied to. One of the biggest problems we face is people don't trust information, don't trust intellectuals, don't trust experts, things like that, because we've shifted into an age where we don't believe in anything. We don't believe in the systems. We don't believe in the policies. We don't believe in the politicians. And that's a very dangerous time to be in. It's often like a power vacuum. Gramsci has said, you know, it's a time for morbid symptoms or for monsters, that people

take advantage of times of crisis when we don't have a means of understanding morality. Things can flip upside down. You just have to read George Orwell to understand that kind of thing. As Spider-Man is told, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. which is that I know that if I say the wrong thing or if I accidentally get a fact wrong or if I have an opinion that I might change later over time or if there is something, you know, if I am critical of, let's say, an artist or another creator who has a lot fewer followers than I do, for example, I have to keep in mind the consequences of that. to really, really think in the back of my mind, okay, these numbers on these little numbers on the

bottom of my screen, that's that 100,000 isn't just a number. That's 100,000 people minus, you know, maybe a thousand bots, perhaps. Those are real people that are looking at my face, telling them something. And for whatever reason, God decided that I have a tone of voice that makes me appear to be an authority on something or makes it look like I absolutely know what I'm talking about 100% of the time, even if it's something that is new that I just learned about, you know, a couple of days ago. I think it's clear. If you were to go through my account and look at every clip, it's clear that I have a perspective. It's an anti-imperialist perspective. it's a perspective which is anti-colonialist,

which is looking at those who are downtrodden and giving them a voice. But at the same time, I'm not trying to put words in somebody else's mouth. I'm not trying to use any kind of trickery. And I think that once again, social media and the news feels like a very loud space. like there's a lot of noise and in a way this cuts through that. I know that when I watch a lecture or when I'm looking at an archive

and I hear something and it doesn't often happen, but I can hear something. There's something about the rhythm of how something is being said. There's something about the way the point is said so concisely and a way and something about the the emotion in the person saying it. These elements together, and I can't pinpoint it, those are the clips that resonate the most of people.

What we believe we are doing at this time is giving a new opportunity to our people, bringing human rights to the vast majority of the people who have never had any human rights, who never knew where it was to press a button to get electricity, as you no doubt can do in your house, Who never knew what it was like to put a tap on and see pipe-borne water flowing through that tap. Who never knew what it was like to get free health care as we now give?

Who never knew what it was like to provide free education as we now provide? Who never knew what jobs were like? There were 49% unemployed before the revolution. Today that is 12% unemployed. That is what the people of Grenada today regard is freedom. So I'd say we do live in this post-truth age. We do live in an age where there is a lot of false information out there. And particularly in the UK where I'm from, we have this thing with the BBC that we want unbiased information all of the time.

And the fact is we don't want unbiased information. We want to understand bias. We want to understand agendas. And we do that through critical thinking. We do that through creating spaces in which we can dismantle and understand agenda. as power systems, how these power systems are structured, how language is shaped, and giving people time to do that. And that's what I'm trying to do on social media is not give people just simple answers, just information to consume. It's creating a space where people can think a little more

about something that they've seen or think about something in a way that they haven't before. and just having that dialogue with themselves or with other people. This is Pundau, the incredibly beautiful embroidery style of the Hmong people, which stretches back thousands of years. It literally translates to flower cloth, because, as some Hmong elders say, it was inspired by the symmetrical cross-section of blooming flowers with their petals radiating upwards.

According to their oral history, the Hmong once had an ancient writing system. But because of the oppression of the imperial Chinese government in the 17 and 1800, some Hmong women created a system of symbols and hid their stories in the pleats of their skirts. Before I go further, hello, I'm Isabella. I talk about anti-authoritarian folk art history. My dream is kind of to be the Anthony Bourdain of art or folk art to be able to go around the world and show people with a camera that, you know, folk art is alive. and it's everywhere, and it's something that makes, it's actually a fundamental part of what keeps our world going,

is people making things with their hands. And that would be, that would definitely signify a huge goal for me. If I can meet that goal, that would definitely be something that would feel really great. Or to be able to make a feature-length documentary one day would also feel really great. But as it is, I think, I like to think of, work in general as something that is lifelong, something that's never going to end. Success to me looks like a revolution. I want things to change. I am doing what I'm doing because I think that we need a different socioeconomic system. We need a different education system.

There are so many problems that we're facing the climate crisis. You know, we've got a cost of living crisis and what success looks like to me is change. And if we can just have these conversations, little by little, we can change the narrative of the future that we have at the minute. And my research was on nostalgia because nostalgia is about giving up on the future. you only romanticize the past when you can no longer see the future. And that's a very dangerous place to be because you get people then with the whole political mission only being revenge.

When I first started this account, it was literally just a space to put up clips that I liked, clips that resonated with me. But after putting up somewhere in the region, of 200 clips of growing the audience, I feel that perhaps there is something more important that I want to create a database. And I'm not sure this is the purpose of the account,

but I often think about if in 10 years' time, I don't know what social media will be in 10 years' time, on what accounts people will have or how we will digest information. But I find it interesting that in 10 years' time, these clips could still exist without any of the trending elements that we have today, be it popping subtitles or gimmicky tactics for displaying videos,

but very clean, very direct, if they will still resonate with people. and if that conversation will still be ongoing. And I believe it will be. I believe that the clips that we put up today, the clips that I'm putting up, will still resonate in many, many years because regardless of the region,

regardless of which conflict, they are the same questions that keep coming up. We have to think of alternatives. We have absolutely no choice. have the system that we have currently is one that relies on infinite growth and it's a finite planet. We have finite resources. We have to think of an alternative or we're going to perish. We have to reclaim and create these spaces to be able to have these dialogues about changing things because otherwise, you know, this system has is already over. It crashed in 2008. It continues to

drag us along in this kind of zombie-fied version of itself. And, you know, we have all different kinds of naming it now, whether you want to call it end times fascism or late stage capitalism. We know there is an end in here. We simply need to stop repeating and stop clapping for something we don't believe in anymore and stop participating it and realize that we have to think of an alternative, we have to come together through compassionate dialogue and understand different ways of structuring society. I always feel uneasy and embarrassed about the term influencer because I get uncomfortable with the idea of any one person having influence or maybe unequal influence over other people.

And because I, you know, I'm just uneasy. even though I've benefited from it in a kind of huge life-changing way, I am also just uneasy with the way that algorithms have dictated so much of our lives up to this present moment. I'm excited, though, at the other hand, that there are a couple thousand of us, perhaps, that have sort of hacked the system. I think there are ways that there are a good little rag-tag group of people that have found a way to introduce real education, real truth about the world through this sort of

kind of inherently unequal algorithm. So it's something that I hope I can, the idea of being an intellectual influencer, I hope that I can live up to that title. It is, it's something that is daunting, but I, yeah, that's what I hope. I don't know if I always like the term influencer, because influences generally influence people to buy things. And I'm most certainly not trying to influence people in a sense of getting them to endorse anything. I'm not trying to push a political opinion on anyone, absolutely not. I'm just trying to allow people to think differently. And I'm just trying to allow people to think differently. And, That's the point of critical theory. It's never what is the right answer. It's always what is the next question. That is critical thinking.

What is the next question? What is the next question? Because I don't see myself as somebody that knows better or knows best than anyone out there. You know, my Nana, as we said, you know, she votes for the far right. She's a compassionate, caring, emotionally intelligent woman. and she's taught me so much. And it's about sharing that knowledge, creating a space where we can come together on issues that we care about

because ultimately it's about compassion. It's about having conversations that are compassionate that empower people. That is the root of critical theory. You know, it's definitely not about me, is what I'm trying to say. I don't think of myself as an influencer and I avoid any association. with that because it's very much part of the ethos and integrity of the of conflict echoes that is not about me. However, I do think it's important to provide intellectual perspectives, and I think people are hungry for that. I think people, just by looking at the people that follow

the account, I can see that people engage with that. I think, These clips that I put up often cut through the noise. Everybody, it sounds, it almost feels like everybody's shouting. Everybody wants you to accept their way of thinking. And it's like, instead of shouting, these are points of view, which are said almost in a whisper. Just somebody calmly articulating a point. That's where I think the power of these clips comes from. That's the conclusion to our episode about intellectual influencers, a term that, as you heard,

they're not all comfortable with. So I hope you heard the air quotes in my voice. Thank you to all of our guests. My name's Isabella Segalovich or Interstellar Isabella on Instagram and TikTok or Ornament and Crime on YouTube. My name is Ahmed Sanjori and I am Conflict Echoes on social media. So my name is Louisa Munch, my handle on Instagram. And TikTok is at Louise Munch Theory.

This episode was produced by Nahid Mustafa. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso, technical production, Emily Carvezio and Danielle Duval. The senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas. And I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.