What does the news do to our brains, our souls, and our views of one another? We spend an inordinate amount of time checking on it. It moulds how we view reality, we’re increasingly addicted to it on our luminous gadgets, we check it every morning when we wake up and every evening before we sleep—and yet the news has rarely been the focus of an accessible, serious, saleable, book-length study. Until now. The News ranges from politics to murders, from economics to celebrities, from the weather to paparazzi shows—all in search of answers to the questions: “What do we want from this?” and “Is it doing us any good?”

After The News, we’ll never look at a celebrity story, the report on a tropical storm, or the sex scandal of a politician in quite the same way again.