The Internet vs Real Life with Peter Limberg and Katherine Dee

There are just two places left for our breathwork and sensemaking course ‘Breathing in Culture’ which begins on 13 November - join here. Trish Blain and I are also offering a free ‘NonOrdinary Sensemaking’ session around the US election on 14 November which you can sign up for here and read more about at the end of this page.

In my recent pieces, I’ve been making sense of the US election through the lens of where we get our news from, exploring the growing split between the legacy and alternative media. This has been a big focus of my work since 2016 and I think this election marks a turning point, one the legacy media may never recover from. But even though we now get our news from social media and alternative journalism, we’re also seeing a cultural backlash against our online lives. Jonathan Haidt made waves this year with The Anxious Generation, which looked at the negative impact of social media and screens on children and adolescents. Many of us have been addicted to our phones for years, and I’ve had a lot of conversations recently with people who feel a sense of emptiness and exhaustion in their online lives; it’s certainly something I’ve felt.  

Two of my favourite thinkers on these issues are Peter Limberg and Katherine Dee, who are my guests in this episode. Peter writes a brilliant Substack (Less Foolish) and heads up a platform called The Stoa, while Katherine is an internet historian and journalist who also writes a great Substack (default.blog) and has written for The Spectator, Unherd and Tablet. They’re running a new series together called Internet Real Life, looking at the changing cultural value of ‘being online’ and the new countercultures that are unplugging from the endless cycle of content creation.  

They’re also guest teachers on Breathing in Culture (along with Peter Boghossian). Both are full of unique insights into how our online lives are evolving, and how to navigate our fractured media landscape. 

‘NonOrdinary Sensemaking: US Election’ with Trish Blain and Alexander BeinerWhether you are thrilled, devastated or somewhere in between about the US election, it’s clear that civil discourse, consensus reality, and non-partisan cooperation have become nearly impossible.

And yet, how do we move forward if we can’t work together?

In this free session we’ll be offering a space to make sense together using techniques that help us tap into our implicit knowledge, combining Trish Blain’s frameworks with Alexander’s sensemaking techniques to help you reach deeper levels of insight, connect to hope and imagine a ‘Hell, Yeah!’ future in the midst of chaos.

To support more audio content and free events on The Bigger Picture, and to access exclusive pieces, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beiner.substack.com/subscribe