It’s a cliché these days to observe that the news can be a hazard to our collective mental health. The prospects for the ignition of World War 3 in Eastern Europe, new variants and outbreaks of a pandemic that we thought was over, increasingly shrill warnings of the collapse of our biomes and the attendant unravelling of modern civilisation — none of these stories, which are now standard fare across most of our major media platforms, encourage what is colloquially referred to as “balance”. Still, through our enforced numbness, some stories shout louder at us than others.