Why We're Terrible At Taking Care Of Our Mental Health

Monty Python once taught us the following neuroscience: "The human brain is like an enormous fish. It is flat, and slimy, and has gills through which it can see." That obvious bullshit is obvious bullshit. It's also not much sillier than our own daily treatment of our brains. We know the human brain needs calm, care, and interaction with other humans. So why don't we give that to our gilled head-fish?

On this week's episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt sits down with Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) to rediscover brains and the humans carrying them around. They'll get into why this is the era of bombarding our minds with Snapchats, sleeplessness, and incomplete friendships. They'll explore the fundamental feedback loops that make us seek out bad habits. And they'll pick out how you can be aware of your own mental health needs, even if our wider culture wants to trick you into forgetting all about them.

Footnotes:

7 Creepy Ways Corporations Are Turning You Into an Addict (Cracked)

5 Ways You're Sabotaging Your Own Life (Without Knowing It) (Cracked)

Is Mental Health Declining in the U.S.? (Scientific American Mind)

Why is Facebook admitting that social networks can be bad for our health? (Recode)

Big tech's bid to control FOIA (Columbia Journalism Review)

This Is the Data Snapchat Doesn't Want You to See (The Daily Beast)

All that smartphone time may be making teens unhappy (UPI)

Here's what Rogue One's Princess Leia looked like without the CGI (SyFy Wire)

Teens' night-time use of social media 'risks harming mental health' (The Guardian)

Tackling the Internet's Central Villain: The Advertising Business (The New York Times)

How Social Isolation Is Killing Us (New York Times/The Upshot)

Wendy's is installing self-order kiosks so it can get rid of human workers-and it's not alone (Splinter)

Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes

The fight over Fight Club (RogerEbert.com)

"You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet." -- Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

Join us for our next LIVE Cracked Podcast! It's happening Saturday, February 10th at 7pm. Alex Schmidt is joined by guests Dan Hopper, Amy Nicholson, and Dave Schilling for tales of the most secretly terrifying movies of all time. Tickets are $7 and available HERE.