Happy Friday! ☀️
Coucou from my last week here in the Dordogne before heading back to Berlin via Brussels and Cologne where I will be spending my first few days with a client after three months off.
What I’m reading 📖
Carl Rogers was an American psychologist known amongst others for starting the humanistic and client-centered approach in psychology and psychotherapy. I’ve come across his work here and there and found it compelling but I never actually read his work. This week, I’m reading A Way of Being which he wrote near the end of his career in 1980 and contains reflections and life lessons learned over the course of his life and career. More about the book.
What I’m listening to 🎧
This week I felt drawn into broad, deep, and long conversations–mainly with scholars–who sometimes share views and opinions different than mine. Lex Fridman’s podcast currently is a podcast that offers these kind of conversations and I devoured a series of them:
A fascinating conversation with historian Stephen Kotkin about Russia, Putin, Zelenskyy and Ukraine. What I enjoyed was the broader context–historic and psychologic–that Kotkin provides instead of the day-to-day news on the conflict.
An eye-opening conversation with professor for economics and social sciences Glenn Loury about race, racism, equality, identity politics, and cancel culture. I learned a lot here and felt surprised at several moments throughout.
An enlightening conversation with Jonathan Haidt about the effects of social media on young people and ideas of how to address them.
What I’m watching 📺
This week I watched the 4-episode courtroom thriller You Don’t Know Me, the story of a young man from South London, Hero, accused of murder. The evidence against him is overwhelming, but rather than let one of the lawyers decide what's in his best interest, he chooses to exercise his right to tell his own story, in his own words. Produced by the BBC, and acquired by Netflix, you can find the show there. Here’s the trailer.
What I’m thinking about 🧠
The experience of freedom arises not from acquiring our preferred lifestyle and our preferred state of mind but from a willingness to stay with ourselves—to be completely committed to experiencing our lives—regardless of circumstance.
– Bruce Tift in Already Free
What else?! 💯
In other news this week, Vice Chancellor and Minister Robert Habeck took 30 minutes to do a Q&A on Instagram to address some of the constituency’s questions about the current energy crisis and the shortage of gas coming from Russia. It’s a refreshing way to hear a politician take the time to explain a complex and heated topic and provide wider context by using simple and direct language. It’s a format that works well for Habeck and I wish he would do it regularly. Check it out.
Thanks for reading, bon weekend!
David
Instagram | Website | 2021 Playlist | Company