Joe Rogan Podcast, Tom Bilyeu, Russel Brand

https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerfulJRE, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnYMOamNKLGVlJgRUbamveA, https://www.youtube.com/user/russellbrand

These are interview channels, generally concerned with personal development. Each person has generally different perspectives but there is frequently an overlap in the interviewees and the conversation content changes between them, that makes it worthwhile watching each one. Examples include Wim Hof and Jordan Peterson.

Over the years I try to keep up with reading, audiobooks and generally try to keep up with what to read or find out about next. The way I use these channels is by watching as many videos as I can in order to get the jist of what messages the interviewees have. Typically these people are speakers or authors. The purpose of their presence on these channels is usually to promote a book or to give their message to the world.

I enjoy the conversational format of these interactions, as opposed to an audiobook from the same person, or a book, or even from one of their own youtube videos speaking directly about their subject.

I realise that some might call this the ‘Millennial mindset’ whereby the accusation is that the mental faculties to keep concentrated enough to be able to do things like read a book don’t exist, or haven’t been developed. This could be down to laziness, enabled by the variety of modern conveniences in life. I remember my English teacher complaining that students these days (the 90s) couldn’t just turn to a chapter number in a book, they needed to be told the page number to go to. I’d guess in previous times books never contained page numbers. In the 2000s I remember the complaint that people could no longer remember phone numbers. The argument being that everyone shifted to using mobile phones where the number was held in the phone address book. You no longer had to type it in every time to call someone. More recently is that people don’t have the ability to recall specific memories any more, as the first response to recall a fact is to search google for it. 

A defense of this seemingly ‘dumbening’ of society might actually be that people are merely changing to the conditions that exist in real life. In fact, it might be said that the requirement these days is to be able to skim through ever-increasing masses of information in order to obtain the specific point of information as quickly as possible. Before, when the information source was one textbook, a public library or opinions of local people who you could meet in real life, such as friends, family or teachers, then it was actually possible to get access to every opinion that was available to you. Now with the internet, that is simply impossible. Every book you read necessarily is time lost you could have spent reading another book.

The required skill now is being able to handle information at different ‘depths’ and then being able to delve down to the right level when required.

With that in mind, these channels give a top-level curated list of authors’ opinions in an ‘interactive’ and engaging way that I can put on at 2x speed in order to get the essence of the opinion of that person. If there are some insights that I need more information on, then I can delve down by watching more of that person’s videos, interviews or book reviews. And if I am still looking for more information even after that, I can then take a ‘deep dive’ by actually reading or listening to the book. That, for me, gives the optimum balance of ‘breadth and depth’ of discovery.

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