Faced with a sudden glut of information, cognitive biases cause the modern mind to overthink and underthink the wrong things.

I was doing everything I could think of to defect from the state of overwhelm and consumption that had become my

Broadly, magical thinking describes the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect external events.

Learning to stomach a sense of irresolution might be the only way to survive this crisis.

addiction and criminal activity were more strongly connected with celebrity worship than calcium intake with bone mass or lead exposure with children’s IQs.

folks with higher anxiety are quicker to engage with, and slower to disengage from, negative information; so, “as a trait and state,” anxiety itself perpetuates paranoid thinking.

celebrity worship had increased dramatically since two decades prior.

It’s really no wonder, then, that so many Taylor Swift acolytes slip into the “Borderline-Pathological” category of standom.

those who “worshipped” people they really knew, like parents and teachers who could make tangible contributions to their lives, had overall higher self-esteem and educational achievement. Glorifying pop stars and athletes predicted the opposite—lower confidence, weaker sense of self. This finding supports the “absorption addiction model” of