Hamish Macdonald

I mean, I think like everyone, I'm impacted, influenced by the news and there's a lot of really difficult, heavy stuff going on in the world today.

And I think that probably provokes things in all of us.

So it's not like you're kind of free of that.

But I definitely think I've re-established a relationship with long-form reading.

So books, you know, magazine articles, all that sort of stuff, in a way that I think is healthier.

When I want to tune out or calm down, I'll just go and sit on a couch with a book.

And I only do physical books.

I know, you know, e-readers and all the rest are fantastic.

But I just think, and in fact, I've learned through this doco series that reading

There is something different going on in our brains when we read a physical book compared with something on a screen.

And that doesn't fix everything.

It doesn't solve any of the problems.

But I think if you can have a healthy relationship with things in the real world, even if those things are fictional, that's probably healthier than some of the other options.

Yeah, absolutely.

I didn't do a very good job of explaining it, did I?

It's been a big journey over the last couple of years, basically, to travel the world and Australia just to try and –

find out both what's happening broadly in the world that's diminishing, damaging our grip on reality, but also to find out what's happening in our brains.

Because I think we all can sense it's doing something to our brains, but is it actually changing something?

And the short answer is it is.

Foreshadowing a rant.