Welcome to Monday’s News on the March – The week that was in my digital world.
Bret and Heather 128th Podcast Livestream: Life, Death and Meaning
Podcast at Bret Weinstein
The reason for the inclusion of this podcast into this week’s News on the March is Heather Heying’s discussion about Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. His memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.
From 14:20 in the video you can watch Heather give her take of the book which includes an insightful extract related to finding meaningfulness through volunteer work. The emphasis of this part is ‘The truth is man does not live by welfare alone‘ but by finding unpaid, meaningful activity. Some options include youth organisations, public libraries and adult education. (Watch entire podcast here)
Elvis: The Rebirth of the King (2017 BBC Documentary)
Documentary at waylonlids
I was reading about the upcoming Elvis biopic by Baz Luhrmann. My knowledge of Elvis has always been a bit lacklustre, so I searched documentaries in the hope of becoming more cognizant of him prior to the screening of Baz’s movie. I was captivated by this one – The Rebirth of the King from the BBC (View entire documentary here)
Coleman Hughes on the Fracturing of the Human Mind with Jonathan Haidt and Guests
Video interview at Coleman Hughes
‘We had a zoom meeting for 2 year olds’…
We all discuss what has changed since Jonathan and Greg published “The Coddling of the American Mind” back in 2018. We talk about the effect of social media on political polarization and mental health. We also discuss Jonathan’s recent viral Atlantic essay called “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”, and lots of other related topics. Unfortunately, because of the constraints of the live event, this is a shorter podcast than usual. However, I’m getting Jonathan back on the podcast very soon to have a full-length discussion about all this stuff.’ (Watch video here)
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
I watched the Coleman Hughes podcast, and it was an interesting discussion. Social media has definitely impacted my own mental well-being, providing me with both euphoric highs when major artists acknowledge my tweets and posts, or better yet, follow me, but also crushing disappointment when they do not. It’s a real conundrum.
That podcast was great. Lex Fridmen mentioned something similar in his most recent discussion with Jonathan Haidt after the discussion relayed here in this post specifically about the Euphoria. Lex is famous and I imagine you are well known in music circles, so at least you get that dopamine from expected reaction. It seems when our meaningful words (or images) don’t receive the desired reaction; young people especially can perceive it awfully wrong.
I’m not a huge Elvis fan but Peter Guralnick wrote two books…a part 1 and part 2… one ending around the time he left the army and the other the rest. Bob Dylan even said “Elvis steps from the pages. You can feel him breathe. This book cancels out all others.” and they do I have to admit.
The most shocking thing about him to me was that he tried LSD a couple of times…I just couldn’t picture that. Colonel Tom Parker was his downfall to me…he worked him like the town pump.
Yeh, Parker (played by Hanks) is universally given the blame for Elvis. I agree with Dylan that Elvis just emerged from the pages.