This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Maybe your mornings sound like this.

You wake up to your alarm ringing, you turn it off and bring your phone back to bed with

you.

You scroll through email and social media, squinting through one eye to see what you've

got to get done and what's happening in the news.

When you finally get up and start getting ready, maybe you have some music going.

Or your favorite TV channel.

Many of us are voracious consumers of information and we're always looking for new ways to take

an even more.

Alexa, what's the weather today?

In Charlotte, North Carolina, it's 63 degrees with mostly sunny skies.

But even as we savor good news about the weather or the stock market or weekend plans, we're

also regularly confronted by staff that's unpleasant.

To listen to your unread voice mails, press one.

Unpleasant information creates a paradox for the brain.

This kind of information is often very important.

First message.

This is the principal calling from your son's school.

Please contact us so we can arrange a time to discuss your son's behavior.

But this kind of information also produces psychic pain.

And one of the oldest rules in the brain is to avoid things that are painful.

...