Beyond Doomscrolling

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Arts, Science, Performing Arts, Social Sciences

4.6 • 40.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2020

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s no question that 2020 has been a tough year. We're grappling with a global pandemic. A deep recession. Fresh reminders of racial injustice. But today — without minimizing the justifiable pain that 2020 has brought to so many people — we wanted to explore another way of seeing things. We talk with psychologist Steven Pinker about why it's so hard to see things that are going well in the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.
0:05.6	When historians write the narrative of life in 2020,
0:10.1	they're going to have a lot of ground to cover.
0:12.8	One of the topics that might be easy to overlook
0:16.0	is Doom's crawling.
0:18.6	Another 4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits.
0:22.3	Florida recorded record high numbers of coronavirus cases today.
0:26.4	Trump supporters clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters at the Washington Monument.
0:31.1	Whether or not you've used the term, you've probably engaged in Doom's crawling over the last few months.
0:37.6	It's the uncontrollable urge to consume terrible story
0:42.1	or to terrible story.
0:43.9	So I'm sure maybe the next pandemic will happen.
0:48.4	This dream of bad news flows ceaselessly through our social media feeds at every hour of the day.
0:55.2	You're the 7 million households in the United States.
0:57.2	All great overdoses are on the rise of coronavirus.
0:59.2	Statue of abolition is spread, but let's not break the restrictions.
1:03.2	Statue of abolition is spread, which does a great term in space at a local park.
1:07.2	So many of us are unable to turn away from the avalanche of bad news.
1:11.2	And it's easy to understand why we are drawn to Doom's crawling.
1:15.2	We're trying desperately to make sense of a year
1:19.2	that has been disruptive and devastating in so many different ways.
1:23.2	There are many terrible and difficult problems we face today, and they deserve our attention.
	...

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