Jordan Peterson On Importance Of Reading

i've got a question one that i wanted to ask you last time but we didn't have time to get to it and one that really piggybacks off what you were just talking about how there's different ways to explore the world one of them being reading and i think that's one very very important and timeless way of exploring the world what do you think about this phenom less people are reading like it feels like almost nobody is reading per you know per capita uh what do you make of that do you see that as an existential crisis what do you make of it no no well reading has always reading for pleasure has always been a minority occupation like most people don't read for pleasure of the people who read for pleasure only a small proportion buy books of the people who buy books only a small proportion buy difficult books it's a specialty market and and i don't i don't think that's changing what i do see happening though is that that is being expanded in surprising ways by such things as youtube videos and podcasts so you find that you can find x the value and something like that is just as valuable as something you could possibly find in a book i think that the two technologies have their advantages and disadvantages the thing about a book that you can't get from a discussion is that a book is a book is like a portrait as opposed to a photograph you know photographs it's click that's that a portrait you layer on and layer on and layer on and work over on for weeks you still have the same single image but there's this depth to it and a book enables you to think and then rethink and think and then rethink and so you can go deeper in a book than you can i would say in any other medium but that doesn't mean you can't go deep in a podcast and it doesn't mean that there's no educational utility in in in podcasts plus there's audio books right and people are listening to those there's another question do you think that audiobooks are just as valuable as books oh sure just as good well the thing about the thing is if you can really read you can read way faster than you can listen so reading is more effective except that and this is what's cool about podcasts and and what's what's game changing about them i would say is we can't read while you're driving yeah you can't read while you're doing the dishes or exercising and so all of a sudden with the podcast world people have all this time that was used maybe listening to music which is fine right but lots of people now are listening to like difficult podcasts yeah educational yes yes and long detailed discussions about political issues that was never possible with television or even with radio for that matter so and you know people say well young people have a fragmented attention span it's like well yeah but joe rogan does three hour podcasts right those do just fine and your podcast is how how long have you been two hours yeah generally right so that's not for a fragmented attention sure so no i think it's good you're absolutely right i think the number one person who listens to this podcast and podcast in general are people who are occupied doing something else yep and i think you're right that's a really valuable to be able to utilize that space definitely definitely it's found time right so that's why the podcast market i think has exploded it's like oh look i can make use of commuters you know people spend thousands of dollars a month in their time commuting it's like poof all of a sudden you can make that you can you can take a university degree while you're commuting essentially you know in terms of of the knowledge that you can attain so i'm not pessimistic about that at all and also the way that you have been using youtube with your content is kind of amazing it's yeah the way that there's hundreds of thousands of views on your lectures and yeah and they're difficult yeah they're difficult they push me when i'm like and they're long that's right and there's a big market for there's a big market for high quality educational material so or demanding educational material let's say one of the brilliant things you've done is you you market yourself really well and to the new media i think where uh your contemporaries weren't weren't doing that right and so you really broke new ground with that and i mean it's paid dividends for you obviously yeah well it's part of my insane curiosity you know and i've always learned i knew well it's this it's the same thing we were talking about 10 minutes ago it's like i've done a lot of different things in my life and i've always felt like a complete idiot when i started doing them because that's why carl jung said for example that the fool is the precursor to the savior you have to be willing to be a fool to advance because when you first move in your new direction what the hell do you know you're just a bumbling dimwit you know but you won't be that for long that's the thing whereas if you stay in your little safe place your little safe space let's say then well nothing well something will get you sooner or later you can bloody well be sure of that but temporarily you're safe well that's not helpful and so when i started you know it started when i started talking to journalists they would phone me and i would talk to them and most of my colleagues would they'd usually say something dismissive about journalists like well they always get it wrong it's like well first of all there's no they and and what makes you think you're important enough to pay attention to anyways and if they get it wrong maybe it's because you didn't explain it very well and the journalists would call and i'd talk to them and well then they'd offer me an opportunity so i got an opportunity to go on a tv show and i thought oh that's interesting i'll go do that and so i did that it worked pretty well and then i got an opportunity to do some more and then i was on a regular on a on a tv panel news show in ontario and then i got this little 13 13-part series that they made out of my courses and and started doing public lectures and those all worked and then i thought oh well what the hell would happen if i put these on youtube there seems to be a market for them but it was pretty amateurish do you think that whole journey started by just taking the call from that first journalist oh sure but taking it in a particular way it was the same way that we're having this conversation i thought well journalist has a question i'll i'm not doing anything expedient i'm not saying well you know i'm hoping that that something will come out come of this i didn't have a specified goal in mind i thought let's have a conversation and let the chips fall where they will yeah yeah and so and one of the things that distinguishes me i would say from many of my colleagues and perhaps from many people is that generally when someone comes along and says well would you like to do this i'd say okay like let's give it a try and i don't expect that i'm going to be particularly good at it to be how would i be i'm certainly not as good at it as i'm going to be that's for sure right you know because obviously when you first start something you're just not that good at it but you know like i felt like a fool when i when i first started to practice as a therapist or when i first started to lecture when i first started to work as a business consultant when i was designing software when i was going on you know starting to do media events it's like what the hell do i know i don't know how to do this it's like whatever man it's like oh when you first upload it when you first upload it to youtube yeah yeah well and i mean you know the channel kind of limped along for a while i mean it depends on how you measure it but i mean when i really sat up and paid attention was in april 2016 the views hit the million mark and i thought millionaire what does that mean i really thought about it i thought a million's a lot if i sold a million books it's like that's when you do the little touchdown dance right right in in at the end of the field because that just doesn't happen and i'd never write a scientific paper that had a million views that just never happens ever not once right then you think well if you talk to 50 stadiums full of 20 000 people you'd think that's noticeable right that's noticeable i thought million and people were watching the lectures like their long lectures they were watching it wasn't just 30 seconds they were in there like some people would browse and pop out but lots of them were watching them right to the end and so i thought all right what the hell is this youtube thing anyways what is this it's not cute cat videos it's it's and then i thought oh i get it i see what it is it's like the inventing of the it's like the invention of the printing press it's that big for the first time in human history the spoken word has as large a reach and as long a duration as a book right that's never happened period it's a great analogy it's a man that like that just blew me away i thought oh this is a gutenberg revolution this is a big deal [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: H3 Podcast Highlights

Views: 3,663,435

Keywords: h3 podcast, podcast, h3h3, h3h3productions, ethan klein, ethan and hila, reading, literature, podcasts

Id: U4BoRsPUwUs

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2018