2 kinds of monkeys

How our brains might be hard-wired to anticipate bad news. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

I have a friend who doesn’t worry about things he can’t control.

It’s a hard-won habit. My friend will be the first to tell you he developed it because he made some mistakes when he was young, wound up in the criminal justice system, and even spent time in jail.

As a result, he had long periods in his youth in which he faced a parade of uncertainty and negative possibilities regarding his future. It was out of his hands, though, and if he hadn’t learned not to worry, he would have driven himself crazy.

My friend is now a success story by any measure: wonderful family, good job, no legal trouble in decades. But it turns out this ability he developed—not worrying when you can’t do anything anyway—is a valuable life skill in modern times.

Consider the notion of “doomscrolling”—defined as “the act of endlessly scrolling through bad news on social media and reading every worrisome tidbit that pops up.”

Especially in the past few years, it’s become more common as things have come together in a p…