I think when you look at the news and there's something intriguing or exciting or even threatening but interesting, it gives you that little rush.

And we are not a society anymore that's used to long periods of quiet time without input.

We're inundated all the time and so you have to keep increasing the load to keep it exciting.

I'm Jocelyn K. Gly, and this is Hurry Slowly, a podcast about pacing yourself, where I explore how you can be more creative, productive, and resilient resilient all through the simple act of slowing down.

Now, I think we can all agree that when you're trying to do creative work, feeling anxious

has an extremely negative impact on your productivity. You just can't get into a flow state

when you're all worked up, and your central nervous system is operating

on overdrive. And so today, we're going to talk about one of the key contributors to over

worry in 2018, your media diet. And why cramming a constant stream of news into your brain

ratchets up your stress levels and sends your

anxiety skyrocketing. My guest is Mary McNaughton Castle, a professor at UT San Antonio and a

clinical psychologist who studies stress and coping, with a particular focus on how the news cycle

affects our well-being.

Our conversation focuses on understanding the psychology that drives our addiction to the news

and how we can redesign our media diets with self-care in mind.

Along the way, we touch on why we don't get happy endings in the news and what that does to our brains.

And how taking action on a local level can soothe our worries about global concerns that are out of our control.

Let's dive in.

So since the introduction of the 24-7 news cycle, obviously a lot of other developments have

happened, the explosion of the internet, the smartphones, social media. How do you think

that our media diets have continued to evolve since the beginning of that 24-7 news cycle?

I think it has been a really subtle creep. So we didn't really pay attention

...