Episode 06: How to News
Impeachment has begun. What's your relationship with the news right now? Emily and Amelia discuss their strategies. Spoiler alert: It's OK to dial it back and take care of yourself.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Episode 6: How to News
Emily Nagoski: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. It's Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. You are listening to the Feminist Survival Project 2020. We are here to help feminists live with confidence and joy inside their bodies, even if they feel overwhelmed and exhausted by everything they have to do, and yet still worry that they're not doing enough.
We want to talk about evidence-based strategies for coping, even in the midst of this nightmare. The impeachment has begun. And I remember listening to a Sarah Vowel audio book in which she talks about her memories of the Nixon impeachment as a young child saying to her mom, "Mom, Watergate's on."
And I imagine that a lot of people are going to have a relationship with the news coverage of the impeachment that many people had of Watergate, or indeed the O.J. Simpson trial and the Clinton impeachment. People get, like, sucked into the constant news coverage and feel like they can't get themselves out.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:15] Yes.
Emily Nagoski: [00:01:16] So when it comes to separating the stress-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:18] They feel like they shouldn't let themselves out-
Emily Nagoski: [00:01:19] And feel like they don't have permission. Yeah, they couldn't if they chose to, but they don't choose. They don't even want to choose to. So I want to talk about how people make choices around their news consumption and how you can figure out what the right news consumption is for you.
Let's begin by talking about our choices.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:36] My choice is to consume little news, minimal news, and only to choose specific outlets. And-
Emily Nagoski: [00:01:44] Which outlets do you choose?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:45] I am a paid subscriber to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I don't, though, just like sit and read through them. I go and I look at the headlines of, like, what's the big important thing that's happened now?
I spend maybe 10 minutes on that a day. I watch Rachel Maddow. It's a thing my husband and I do together. It's like some shared TV viewing time. And that's really it. I'll also click on some articles that I might see on Facebook, if somebody posts something that looks interesting, but I, I, I just kinda don't.
Emily Nagoski: [00:02:13] So that's a level of exposure that you feel like does not suck you dry, does not get you, like, trapped in a vortex. If I had that level of exposure, I would definitely be sucked in and trapped in the vortex.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:02:25] Ohhh-
Emily Nagoski: [00:02:26] I have wayyy less news exposure than that. I shut off news on my phone.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:02:35] You shut off news on your phone?
Emily Nagoski: [00:02:37] Yeah. So I can't, unless I very deliberately go looking for it. So there's no, I can't just stumble upon something. I get most of my news from Stephen Colbert, the late night monologue, which is, like, nice and sugarcoated. It's like a Flintstones Vitamin C tablet. Basically, like, yeah, you got it-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:03:00] But it came with a spoonful of sugar.
Emily Nagoski: [00:03:02] Yeah. Full of sugar. Yeah. And then there was a tiny, tiny bit of news. And I did have more news exposure. I watched Rachel Maddow pretty much every day until babies in cages. And then not even she could make that tolerable... To my literal physical body could not cope with exposure to how terrible it was.
And this all began literally the day of the inauguration. I had to turn it off because I couldn't, like, I couldn't. And I knew that about myself. And I can feel it in my body when I begin to get sucked in. It feels a very much like an addiction where if you expose yourself to a little bit, yeah, it takes over and it's all you can do.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:03:57] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:03:58] And so, like, I have to abstain completely.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:04:00] Yes. I feel like my rage storage is so minimal that as soon as I have a response to the news that is like, "Oh, I can't even," I, I walk away, I don't feel drawn in. I feel repelled.
Emily Nagoski: [00:04:16] Oh yeah, no, I, I feel drawn in and so I need to have way less news exposure than you do.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:04:23] Ah, that's why then.
Emily Nagoski: [00:04:24] So, we're choosing from what sources we're going to receive our news. We're choosing how much news exposure we get. How much time we spend with those sources, and we're choosing how frequently we engage with those sources.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:04:38] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:04:39] And for me, because increasing news exposure makes me feel desperate and despairing without changing my moral principles, without changing my priorities, without changing what it is I can actually do to contribute to the solution in the face of the nightmare, it does not do any good for me to know the details of precisely how terrible it is. It just does not contribute to whether or not I'm contributing in any way to making the world a better place. In fact, it reduces my capacity to contribute. It ties me down to the couch so that I cannot get up and actually do my work.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:05:31] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:05:33] So, I was having this conversation with a whole bunch of friends and colleagues at a conference, and every single person that I was talking to had a strategy. They had, like, "I get this five minutes of headlines that I listened to on a podcast every day. It's five minute podcast." People were like, "I get the email with the headlines from the New York times, and sometimes I read those headlines. Sometimes I don't. I almost never actually click on any of the stories," and that was enough for them. So everybody's got a strategy. Think about who you're willing to hear it from, how frequently you're going to engage with them, and how long you're going to engage with it.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:06:11] Yeah. And be aware of what your response is when you're overexposed.
Emily Nagoski: [00:06:16] So, we're going to be asking you to email us feministsurvivalproject2020@gmail.com and tell us what strategy you're using and we're going to, in the show notes, as we hear from you, after the show comes out, we're going to put links to the things that you find helpful.
Like if there, is there an app that you use? Is there a show that you watch that you find is non-harmful to you. So that we can gather those as a resource for other people.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:06:43] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:06:43] But also we want to talk to you about recognizing in your body how to know what too much news exposure feels like, so that you can cut yourself off.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:06:54] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:06:55] And to talk about this, I want to bring in some language from a contemplative Buddhist practice. And let me say first that I know that it's a little bit like, "I want to bring in the idea of accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior" as an analogy. I know I'm applying a religious principle to a secular thing and there are problems with that, and I'm going to do it anyway because it's really useful.
So don't think that this is a comprehensive review of this idea. Feel free to Google it if you want to. It's very fascinating and really powerful in a lot of different ways, but it's called Shenpa. I learned about it, as most people who know about it, learned about it from Pema Chodron.
She describes it as feeling hooked. Where there's some sort of vulnerable emotional place in you that something in your environment catches onto and you get hooked, you get sucked, you get dragged down into the vortex of your own emotional internal experience.
So if your partner has a particular thing they say or do, that just every time they say or do it, it's not just that it irritates you, it's that it, like, takes you on an emotional journey of all the things that are wrong in your relationship or your life or you. That's Shenpa. You got hooked. Something inside you got activated and took you further down.
So when I expose myself to too much news- it's like a magnetic pull, right? If I get too close to it, I just get trapped in it. Shenpa. I get, like, hooked by the feeling of it, and I need, like, very little exposure in order to prevent myself from just getting sucked into the vortex.
Sounds like you can tolerate a greater degree of exposure, and actually when you get exposed, you're repulsed by it, it doesn't suck you in.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:08:51] Yeah, I do get hooked by things in that Shenpa way, but news doesn't usually do that...
Emily Nagoski: [00:08:57] What do you get hooked by?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:08:59] More emotional things. There's TV scenes or, um, just not news.
Emily Nagoski: [00:09:05] Yeah. So if you notice yourself getting hooked, it's going to be extra important that you set boundaries or else you will be sitting at work in front of your computer - if in front of a computer is where you work - secretly watching C-SPAN at your desk. Which, there are worse things to be doing at your desk, but what else could you be paying attention to? And think about the opportunity cost. What could you be doing with that energy instead? That would first of all, be you actually contributing to the thing you are here to do. That is to say the thing that is your meaning and purpose. Your "something larger" that we talked about last week.
And second of all, also think about what am I doing to my body right now? Is my adrenaline level activated, my heart rate activated and my muscles are getting tense? Think about what you're doing to your cardiovascular system to stay in that sustained state of stress and not able to do anything.
The stressor here the lion that's chasing you is the federal government.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:11] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:10:12] We may be fortunate enough to have listeners who are, like, lawyers as part of the impeachment process. In which case we have a whole different set of advice for you, but begin at the beginning with the podcast.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:25] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:10:27] But for most of us who are not actually involved in the impeachment-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:31] We can't do anything. We can't change- I mean, we could call our representative, et cetera, et cetera, but, like we're not gonna that's maybe five minutes of your life.
Emily Nagoski: [00:10:38] You don't need to watch four hours of news coverage in order to, first of all, know that you can call your representatives.
Yeah.
It's not going to change how you vote.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:48] No. So those are the internal experience side of choosing how you consume news. I want to talk a little bit about the external pressures and the expectations that people feel-
Emily Nagoski: [00:10:59] yeah. That's your job.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:11:00] -That they stay informed and engaged, and "did you read this story?" and "Oh, did you hear that XYZ happened?" and "Oh, did you read that last tweet?" and "Did you hear about what somebody else said?"
We have this expectation that we're going to be engaged. We're going to be informed. Let's talk about the broader historical context of that. Cause this is so fucked up.
We in 2019 are experiencing news in a way that no one has ever experienced it before.
Emily Nagoski: [00:11:27] Even the two impeachment processes, they didn't have the internet.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:11:33] They were, they were televised, but they weren't social media'd. They weren't on 24-7 and on six different networks all the time. This is strange what's going on now. This is not how human beings were meant to engage with their environment. Look, the idea of news has been around long time. Publishing papers and traveling and telling stories of what happened-
Emily Nagoski: [00:11:58] 15th century.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:11:59] Yeah, absolutely that's been a thing. And the invention of the radio means that we can hear, like, a news broadcast maybe once a day or twice a day. Same thing once television's invented. For a long time, for like the whole 20th century, half an hour of news.
You watch the news at six and then you turn to something else or you eat dinner. Like, that was it.
Emily Nagoski: [00:12:21] 🎵🎵It's Howdy Doody time...
Sorry. Just trying to make it a little lighter.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:12:27] No human beings before us have ever had to check their news consumption and monitor how the news makes them feel. So the fact that you feel like you don't know how to do this, of course you don't know how to do this. It's like learning how to fly! Human beings have never done this before.
You are the Wright Brothers of news consumption awareness. We're just figuring this out. So don't feel like, "Well, how come I don't know how to do it? Everybody seems to have all their shit together!"
Like no. No one knows how to do this yet. It's brand new.
Emily Nagoski: [00:12:54] And there's no good answer, right? So in my group of friends and colleagues who were talking about all the strategies they have-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:13:00] Well, there's no one answer.
Emily Nagoski: [00:13:01] Yeah. Every, every choice you make is a compromise of some kind-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:13:05] And someone's going to have an opinion about your choice.
Emily Nagoski: [00:13:08] Yeah. As one of my friends said, "Yes, I feel guilty about not watching the news, but guilt is better than despair." That is the trade off. It's a cost benefit analysis of what is the cost of doing this? What are the benefits of doing this? What are the costs of not doing this? What are the benefits of not doing this?
Think through these variables that we've been talking about in terms of what is the cost benefit and don't forget your body. And recognize that what's happening in your body deserves a voice in your decision, not just other people's opinions.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:13:48] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:13:48] Can we talk about the idea of it being a privilege not to watch the news?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:13:52] Yes, because I wrestle with this a lot. I feel, I feel some feelings about not watching the news. I know that I live a quite a comfortable life. I live in the country. I have a husband, I'm white, I have a lot of privilege.
And the things that happen, that are happening now, are happening mostly to brown and black people, to gay and trans people. And poor people. And these are people who are in my life, who I love and I know are suffering under these autocratic decisions that are being made by this shit show of a government.
But I, I also feel like I'm not going to be in this game. I'm not going to be available to do anything if I have just been dragged to the ground by this overwhelming quantity of news. So I feel like it's enough for me to stay as informed as someone from the 1950s.
I'm aware of what's going on. I'm aware of when there are opportunities for me to do something to contribute, but I'm not obsessing over every detail and I have concluded that's enough.
I am still having feelings about the fact that I made that decision, but it's all I got.
Emily Nagoski: [00:15:14] I think that because my feelings about the news are more existential, because the work I do is directly related to the policies that are being destroyed by this administration - outside of the actual corruption - there's just the terrible, destructive, misogynist, racist policies above and beyond the actual, like, corruption, collaboration with foreign enemies.
And so my exposure to the news, like, I do this for a living. It's my job to think and talk about women's reproductive issues and stuff. So, when I see these things being destroyed on a daily basis, I see my work for the last 25 years being destroyed and it doesn't, it doesn't help me do my job better. There are some people in my field who benefit from staying really on top of the news, staying really informed about the details of what's happening in these policies, and I am not that person.
I'm a person who stands and watches at a large scale and does education for professionals.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:23] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:16:24] So my difference in my choice has to do with my relationship to the content of the news.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:33] That's very specific.
Emily Nagoski: [00:16:35] Is it?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:35] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:16:36] I had never thought about it being very specific, because I should say all the friends and colleagues I was talking about shared this experience. They were all sort of in the health education-y type areas.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:45] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:16:46] They're like mental health educators and reproductive health educators and physicians.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:53] Yes, but, like, the national parks being shut down and lack of funding for scientific offices, that's, that's people's jobs. I know people who were laid off during the shutdown. I feel like it's my connection to these issues is broader than just the health things.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:11] Yeah.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:12] So yeah, your health thing is, is specific.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:14] So you're, Oh- Well, so what you're saying is that you're personally connected.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:18] Yes.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:20] I'm like-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:20] No, no, no.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:21] You're personally connected to the topic news stories. So, like a whole bunch of, range of different issues.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:27] Yes. A wider range of issues. Yes.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:30] Whereas, I am identity tied.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:34] Oh.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:34] To a, to a specific range.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:37] Ohhh.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:38] Like it's my, it's my something larger. They are attacking my something larger. And the thing is, here's my thing. There's no such thing as a conversation about climate change that isn't also a conversation about reproductive health and women's rights and there's no conversation about women's and reproductive health without also talking about racism and financial access and, like, they're all connected and tied together.
So, it's like a spider web. Like, you feel a twing in one place and it's a twing everywhere.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:18:10] Yes. It's all interconnected. The universe is all one.
Emily Nagoski: [00:18:16] To conclude: You want to identify your source that you feel comfortable receiving it from, how much time you want to spend engaged with that source, and how frequently you want to expose yourself to that source.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:18:30] At the same time, you need to make decisions about how you're going to navigate the cultural expectation that you should be engaging more or with a different source. Uh, and you're going to have some rage and some grief about that. You're going to have to complete the stress response cycle of dealing with the feelings that come from the decision that you made and the requirement that you have to defend it.
Emily Nagoski: [00:18:50] I have feelings about the fact that we have to do that.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:18:52] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:18:52] Because there's the feelings that come from the news and that's hard enough. And then there's the feelings we have about our choices of whether or not, and how to expose ourselves to the news. And we have to deal with those feelings. And here I am having feelings about that second thing. That's like meta, meta feelings.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:19:05] Yeah.
It's terrible.
Emily Nagoski: [00:19:07] Yeah. So we want to know, we're collecting people's ideas of what feels right for them. We want to make sure you feel, like, deep down there is no right or wrong choice.
It's just the one that's right for you these days. And you know what? If the thing that works in your life is staying glued to C-SPAN and watching every second of it-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:19:31] Go for it.
Emily Nagoski: [00:19:32] If that's what works for you, do you. And we don't just mean in terms of, like, having the information, we mean in terms of, like, emotionally noticing what's happening with your body and making sure you're caring for your wellbeing so that you can survive 2020. Which is again, the point of the podcast.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:19:49] The whole point, yup.
Emily Nagoski: [00:19:49] So let us know at feministsurvivalproject2020@gmail.com. We are going to look for a catalog of ways that people get news that feels right for them.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:01] And how do you deal with the expectation that you should be engaged in a different way?
Emily Nagoski: [00:20:06] And have you been in the position of judging someone else's decision to disengage from the news? I'm interested in what's, what's up with that? Judging someone else's decision about the news.
Are you actually judging their global engagement with the issues, or is it really about watching the news. We want to know. This is a short sort of emergency episode in the face of the beginning of the impeachment.
Oh God, here we go.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:40] Yaaayyy.
Emily Nagoski: [00:20:41] We need a song.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:43] Well, here's a song about what it feels like when you're not doing what other people think is right, but you know that it is.
🎵🎵Unruly, standing in the fire that fuels me.
🎵🎵Learning, reading, brandishing my power while you wind that you find me
🎵🎵Unruly, unruly
🎵🎵 Ooh, surrounded by the people who truly see me, know me, love me and cheer me when I play for my own team.
🎵🎵Unruly, unruly
Emily Nagoski: [00:21:41] And that is this week's Feminist Survival Project. I am Emily Nagoski-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:21:48] And I'm Amelia Nagoski.
Emily Nagoski: [00:21:50] If any part of this was written, it was written by both of us. If any part of it was produced, it was produced by my marital euphemism, and any music is by Amelia. You can follow us on social media. Twitter, and Instagram at @FSP2020 and yeah, seriously do email us at feministsurvivalproject2020@gmail.com. We want a catalog of ways people are absorbing news, or not, in ways that work for them and their bodies and ways that they fend off the cultural criticism that they should be doing it differently. Because God forbid you actually be doing anything right?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:22:24] If you found any of this helpful and you want to help somebody else, please do feel free to share it. And thanks for listening.